death penalty

NORTH CAROLINA -Bernard Lamp receives death penalty for 2008 Iredell murder

february 19, 2014 (iredell)

Two weeks to the day after he was convicted of first-degree murder, Bernard Lamp was sentenced to death Wednesday for killing Bonnie Lou Irvine nearly six years ago.

The same jury that convicted him Feb. 5 deliberated a little more than four hours over two days before recommending the death penalty in Iredell County Superior Court.

Although it is called a recommendation, Judge Ed Wilson is required to accept the jury’s recommendation and, after asking each juror if that was his or her recommendation, he pronounced the sentence on Lamp.

Prior to the sentencing, Wilson asked Lamp if he had anything to say. He made no comment and left the defense table as the jury was exiting the courtroom.

The death sentence will be automatically sent to the N.C. Court of Appeals for review. That is standard in all death sentences.

It is likely to be several years before the death sentence will be carried out. The last execution in North Carolina was in 2006. There are currently more than 150 inmates on death row at Central Prison in Raleigh.

Lamp showed no reaction as Wilson read the jury’s recommendation. One of his attorneys, David Freedman, rested his head on his hand, as he had been doing since the jury knocked on the jury room door and indicated a recommendation had been reached.

Irvine’s sister, Debbie Powers, who was the first witness in the guilt phase and who has been in court for most of the trial, showed no reaction.

Wilson complimented Powers and her two brothers, who also attended much of the trial, for their support.

“You’ve done your sister proud,” he said.

District Attorney Sarah Kirkman and Assistant District Attorney Carrie Nitzu hugged Powers after court was recessed.

Kirkman said she was satisfied with the jury’s decision.

“Ms. Nitzu and I respect the jury’s decision, and our thoughts and prayers are with the victim’s family at this time,” she said. One of Lamp’s two defense attorneys, Vince Rabil, walked over and shook hands with the prosecution.

The sentencing phase brought to an end a case that began in mid-March 2008 when Lamp was arrested driving Irvine’s Volvo near Troutman. Irvine had been reported missing on March 8 but was last seen by her roommate at their Cornelius home on Feb. 28.

That’s the day, according to trial testimony, that she met Lamp in person after contacting him two weeks earlier via a Craigslist ad placed by him.

Her body was found the day after Lamp was arrested. She was buried in the backyard of a home on Weathers Creek Road that belonged to a friend of Lamp’s. She had been beaten and strangled, either one of which could have caused her death, according to expert testimony.

This was the first case in Iredell County in which a jury recommended the death penalty since 2010 when Andrew Ramseur received the death penalty for killing two people at a Statesville convenience store during a robbery in 2007.

Arizona death-row case to get unusual 13th look by high court – Richard hurles

february 20, 2014, (azcentral)

WASHINGTON – When the Supreme Court’s justices sit down Friday to consider which cases to hear, one appeal will be familiar – an Arizona murder case that the justices have taken up the last 12 times they met.

Experts say it is unusual for the justices to consider one case 13 times in a row – so far – at their regular case conference without turning it down or agreeing to hear it. And while they say no one can know for sure, they have several theories why Ryan v. Hurles has been hanging around since before the court’s current term started in October.

“Twelve is a long time,” said Dale Baich, an assistant federal public defender in Arizona. “I don’t recall seeing a case held over for that many times.”

The petition to the Supreme Court is the latest twist in the 22-year case of Richard Hurles, who killed Buckeye librarian Kay Blanton in 1992 when he stabbed her 37 times as she worked alone in the library. He was convicted in 1994 of burglary, attempted sexual assault and first-degree murder, and sentenced to death.

Hurles has filed repeated appeals since then, getting to the point that a death warrant was issued in 2000 before it was stayed.

Among the claims in his latest round of appeals is a charge of judicial bias against trial Judge Ruth Hilliard. Hurles had asked that Hilliard – the judge at both his trial and his sentencing – not be allowed to consider his second post-conviction review.

But that request was denied by Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Eddward Ballinger. Hilliard then denied Hurles’ second petition, a decision that was affirmed by the Arizona Supreme Court.

But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed and in January 2013 a three-judge panel of that court ordered an evidentiary hearing into Hurles’ bias claim.

The Arizona attorney general’s office appealed that ruling last summer to the U.S. Supreme Court, which first put Hurles’ case on its conference calendar Sept. 30. It has put the case on every conference calendar since then, 12 so far, without deciding whether or not to hear it.

“We really don’t know why the case is being held,” said Baich.

But he, like others, offered several possible explanations: The court could be waiting for a decision in a different case to be resolved first, it could be writing an opinion, or a justice, or justices, might be writing a dissent should the case get rejected.

“This is pure speculation on my part,” Baich said. “There could be a number of reasons.”

Amy Howe, editor for the U.S. Supreme Court blog SCOTUSblog, said it is also possible that a justice might be rewording the petition. Or it could just be that the four votes needed to issue a writ of certiorari – agreeing to hear the case – are not there yet and justices are trying to pick up that fourth vote.

Paul Bender, a law professor at Arizona State University’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, said the delay is most likely caused by the court waiting to see a 9th Circuit decision on a similar case that “might resolve the issues in this case.”

The Hurles’ case is “an issue that they’re potentially interested in, but whether they’re really going to take it depends upon what the 9th Circuit did and what the state’s going to do after that,” Bender said.

Howe said despite the theories, there will be no way of knowing the reason for the delay until after the court has either granted or rejected the appeal.

“You just don’t know until you actually see what’s happening,” she said.

Florida death row inmates receive ‘consciousness checks’ at execution – Paul Howell

february 20, 2014 (theguardian)

The state corrections official who stands beside condemned inmates as they take their last breaths in Florida’s death chamber recently pulled back the veil on what has largely been a very secretive execution process.

The testimony was given during a 11 February hearing in a lawsuit involving Paul Howell, a death row inmate scheduled to die by lethal injection 26 February. Howell is appealing his execution; his lawyers say the first of the injected drugs, midazolam, isn’t effective at preventing the pain of the subsequent drugs.

The Florida supreme court specifically asked the circuit court in Leon County to determine the efficacy of the so called “consciousness check” given to inmates by the execution team leader.

The testimony is notable because it shows that the Department of Corrections has changed its procedures since the state started using a new cocktail of lethal injection drugs. A shortage of execution drugs around the country is becoming worse as more pharmacies conclude that supplying the lethal chemicals is not worth the bad publicity or legal and ethical risks.

Timothy Cannon, who is the assistant secretary of the Florida Department of Corrections and the team leader present at every execution, told a Leon County court that an additional inmate “consciousness check” is now given due to news media reports and other testimony stemming from the 15 October execution of William Happ.

Happ was the first inmate to receive the new lethal injection drug trio. An Associated Press reporter who had covered executions using the old drug cocktail wrote that Happ acted differently during the execution than those executed before him. It appeared Happ remained conscious longer and made more body movements after losing consciousness.

Cannon said in his testimony that during Happ’s execution and the ones that came before it, he did two “consciousness checks” based on what he learned at training at the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Indiana – a “shake and shout”, where he vigorously shakes the inmate’s shoulders and calls his name loudly, and also strokes the inmate’s eyelashes and eyelid.

After Happ’s execution, Cannon said the department decided to institute a “trapezoid pinch”, where he squeezes the muscle between an inmate’s neck and shoulder.

It was added “to ensure we were taking every precaution we could possibly do to ensure the person was, in fact, unconscious”, Cannon said. “To make sure that this process was humane and dignified”.

Lawyers for Howell say that they are concerned that the midazolam does not produce a deep enough level of unconsciousness to prevent the inmate from feeling the pain of the second and third injection and causes a death that makes the inmate feel as though he is being buried alive.

“Beyond just the fact that constitution requires a humane death, if we decided that we wanted perpetrators of crime to die in the same way that their victims did then we would rape rapists. And we don’t rape rapists,” said Sonya Rudenstine, a Gainesville attorney who represents Howell.

“We should not be engaging of the behavior that we have said to abhor. If we are going to kill people, we have to do it humanely. It’s often said the inmate doesn’t suffer nearly as much as the victim, and I believe that’s what keeps us civilized and humane.”

Corrections spokeswoman Jessica Cary said on Wednesday that the department “remains committed to doing everything it can to ensure a humane and dignified lethal injection process”.

Cannon explained in his testimony that each execution team member “has to serve in the role of the condemned during training at some point”.

“We’ve changed several aspects of just the comfort level for the inmate while lying on the gurney,” he said. “Maybe we put sponges under the hand or padding under the hands to make it more comfortable, changed the pillow, the angle of things, just to try to make it a little more comfortable, more humane and more dignified as we move along.”

He said an inmate is first injected with two syringes of midazolam and a syringe of “flush”, a saline solution to get the drug into the body. Midazolam is a sedative.

Once the three syringes have been administered from an anonymous team of pharmacists and doctors in a back room, Cannon does the consciousness checks.

Meanwhile, the team in the back room watches the inmate’s face on a screen, which is captured by a video camera in the death chamber. The inmate is also hooked up to a heart monitor, Cannon said.

There are two executioners in the back room – the ones who deploy the drugs – along with an assistant team leader, three medical professionals, an independent monitor from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and two corrections employees who maintain an open line to the governor’s office.

If the team determines that the inmate is unconscious, the other two lethal drugs are administered.

Judge orders new sanity evaluation for accused Colorado movie theater shooter

february 20, 2014

(CNN) — A judge has ordered that accused Colorado movie theater shooter James Holmes undergo an additional sanity examination, saying there was good cause to believe previous testing was “incomplete and inadequate,” according to a ruling issued Wednesday.

Arapahoe County District Judge Carlos Samour Jr. ordered Holmes to undergo an independent exam by the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo by early March, and the report must be filed by July 14.

Samour further ruled the new examiner may not take into account any mitigating factors that are identified in the state’s death penalty statutes.

Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Holmes, who is accused of opening fire in a packed movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a July 2012 midnight showing of the latest Batman installment, “The Dark Knight Rises.”

Authorities have said Holmes was dressed head to toe in protective gear.

Holmes allegedly threw tear-gas canisters in the theater and then opened fire on the patrons, according to witnesses. Police say he used several weapons, including an AR-15 rifle, before fleeing the theater.

Outside the theater, the shooter was apprehended, identifying himself to police as “The Joker,” one of Batman’s archenemies.

Holmes faces 166 charges in the rampage that left 12 people dead and dozens more wounded.

Holmes was a neuroscience doctoral student at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus until the month before the attack; prosecutors have argued that he began plotting his attack while still enrolled.

The defense, meanwhile, appears to be focused not so much on what Holmes allegedly did that night but his mental state then and earlier.

A psychiatrist who treated him had warned campus police at the University of Colorado how dangerous he was, prompting them to deactivate his college ID to prevent him from passing through any locked doors, according to court documents.

(Source: CNN)

Us- Upcoming Executions march 2014

Dates are subject to change due to stays and appeals

UPDATE MARCH 20

Month State Inmate
19 OH Gregory Lott – Stayed
20 FL Robert Henry executed 6.16pm
20 OK Clayton Lockett – Stayed until April 22
26 MO Jeffrey Ferguson EXECUTED
26 MS Charles Crawford Stayed as execution date had not been affirmed by state court.
27 OK Charles Warner – Stayed until April 29
27 TX Anthony Doyle EXECUTED
27 MS Michelle Byrom Update – The Mississippi Supreme Court threw out Michelle Byrom’s murder conviction and death sentence and ordered a new trial due to numerous problems, including inadequate representation, critical evidence not presented to the jury, confessions by another defendant, and the prosecution’s lack of confidence in its own story of what actually happened.
March
19 OHIO Gregory Lott MOVED NOVEMBER 19
19 TEXAS Ray Jasper EXECUTED 6.31 PM
20 OKLAHOMA Clayton Lockett DELAYED (drug shortage)
27 OKLAHOMA Charles Warner DELAYED (drug shortage)
27 TEXAS Anthony Doyle

US- Youngest Serial Killer on Death Row – Harvey Robinson

Tales of serial killers have grown commonplace, but adolescent serial killers are rare. Harvey Robinson from Allentown, PA, is among them, and he’s currently the youngest contemporary serial killer to be sent to death row in America. His case crystallizes some issues surrounding a growing trend toward leniency with juvenile offenders, even the most violent ones.

In Roper v. Simmons (2005), the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the death penalty for offenders who had committed extreme crimes when they were juveniles. In Graham v. Florida (2010), the Court outlawed life without parole sentencing for juveniles convicted of non-homicide crimes. The decision was based in part on neurological research that demonstrated that adolescents are more impulsive and more susceptible to negative influences than adults; mentally and emotionally, their brains are immature. On June 25, 2012, the Court took another step and abolished all mandatory sentences of life without parole for juveniles convicted of homicide.

 

Also in June, the citizens of Allentown collectively held their breath as Harvey Robinson went before a judge to request new sentencing, based on undetected brain damage implicated in his crimes. If the judge were to decide in his favor, they knew, he could chip at the eroding wall that stands between him and possible freedom one day.

In less than a year in 1993, Robinson attacked five females, killing three. He was just 17 years old when he committed his first murder.

He spotted this victim through her window as she undressed for bed. He broke in and killed her. Then after a brief stint in a juvenile facility for a burglary, he grabbed a fifteen-year-old girl off her bike, raped her, and stabbed her twenty-two times.

Six weeks later, Robinson entered another home, but saw his targeted victim with her boyfriend, so he attacked her five-year-old daughter, raping and strangling her. She was found unconscious but miraculously alive.

Soon thereafter, Robinson chased down a woman as she tried to flee from him. He caught up and was raping and choking her when a neighbor switched on an outside light, scaring him away. Aware that he’d left a living witness, he soon entered her home again, but she was not there.

The police believed he would return, so they implemented a risky plan to trap this killer, knowing he would continue until he was stopped. Bravely, the victim agreed to act as bait. In the meantime, Robinson had raped and strangled another woman.

Yet he’d not forgotten the one who got away. He broke in once more, but an officer was waiting for him. After a desperate gunfight, Robinson was caught.

During Robinson’s trial, a forensic psychiatrist testified that he suffered from a dependency on drugs and alcohol and had experienced visual and auditory hallucinations, which had made it difficult for him to adjust to social norms. He’d been under severe stress. Because he had a violent role model in a criminal father, he’d understandably relieved his stress with violence. The psychiatrist believed that, with help, Robinson could overcome his violent impulses.

However, Robinson did not just make an immature mistake; he was a cold-blooded rapist and killer, returning again and again to ensure that his targeted victims were dead. He even tried killing a child.

To the relief of many in the community, on November 8, 1994, Robinson was convicted on three counts of murder and sentenced to death three times.

A new attorney challenged his convictions on the grounds that there were fundamental flaws in the trial procedures. Robinson got his day in court, but he wasted it complaining about his former lawyers.

Still, in 2001 a judge vacated two of Robinson’s death sentences and ordered new hearings. Four years later, the Supreme Court abolished the death penalty for juveniles age 17 and under. This ruling commuted Robinson’s remaining death sentence to life. He knew he had a chance to get off death row.

To prepare for the new sentencing hearings, Robinson’s attorneys had neurological testing performed. The results, they claimed, showed that Robinson had suffered from frontal lobe damage at the time of the murders, which had adversely affected his ability to control his behavior.

However, as the survivors and victim’s families hoped, the judge who listened to Robinson’s new argument decided against him. He had failed to prove that these tests had shown brain damage dating back so many years. This decision restored one death penalty, which will make it more difficult for Robinson to use this reasoning during the next round (next March).

He probably won’t give up. He has many years yet in which to make arguments and await advances in neuroscience. However, for now, the threat of any argument for leniency or eventual parole has been defused. Robinson remains the youngest serial killer on death row.

Europe’s moral stand has U.S. states running out of execution drugs, complicating capital punishment

February 19, 2014

BRUSSELS (AP) — There’s one big reason the United States has a dearth of execution drugs so acute that some states are considering solutions such as firing squads and gas chambers: Europe won’t allow the drugs to be exported because of its fierce hostility to capital punishment.

The phenomenon started nine years ago when the EU banned the export of products used for execution, citing its goal to be the “leading institutional actor and largest donor to the fight against the death penalty.” But beefed up European rules mean the results are being most strongly felt in the United States now, with shortages becoming chronic and gruesome executions making headlines.

In Ohio last month, Dennis McGuire took 26 minutes to die after a previously untested mix of chemicals began flowing into his body, gasping repeatedly as he lay on a gurney. On Jan. 9, Oklahoma inmate Michael Lee Wilson’s last words were: “I feel my whole body burning.”

The dilemma again grabbed national attention this week when an Oklahoma pharmacy agreed Monday to refrain from supplying an execution drug to the Missouri Department of Corrections for an upcoming lethal injection. Death row inmate Michael Taylor’s had argued in a lawsuit that recent executions involving the drug pentobarbital would likely cause “inhumane pain” — and, ahead of a hearing set for Tuesday, The Apothecary Shoppe said it would not provide the drug.

EU nations are notorious for disagreeing on just about everything when it comes to common policy, but they all strongly — and proudly — agree on one thing: abolishing capital punishment.

Europe saw totalitarian regimes abuse the death penalty as recently as the 20th century, and public opinion across the bloc is therefore staunchly opposed to it.The EU’s uncompromising stance has set off a cat-and-mouse game, with U.S. corrections departments devising new ways to carry out lethal injections only to hit updated export restrictions within months.

“Our political task is to push for an abolition of the death penalty, not facilitate its procedure,” said Barba Lochbihler, chairwoman of the European Parliament’s subcommittee on human rights.

Europe’s tough stance has caused U.S. states to start experimenting with new drug mixtures, even though convicts’ lawyers and activists argue they increase the risk of painful prolonged death and may violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

In an upcoming execution in Louisiana, the state is set to follow Ohio’s example in using the untested drug cocktail used in McGuire’s execution. It changed its execution protocol last week to use Ohio’s two-drug combination because it could no longer procure pentobarbital, a powerful sedative.

The execution was scheduled for February, but was stayed pending a federal judge’s examination in April regarding whether the state can proceed with the plan to execute Christopher Sepulvado, convicted in the 1992 killing of his 6-year-old stepson.

In 2010, Louisiana switched from the established three-drug protocol to a one-drug pentobarbital lethal injection, but eventually that drug also became unavailable because of European pressure.“The lethal injection that they are using now in certain states has never been tested, verified, let alone been approved for executions,” said Maya Foa of Reprieve, a London-based charity fighting the death penalty. “This amounts to using humans as guinea pigs. No doctor would ever do that.”

Ohio prosecutors counter that condemned inmates are not entitled to a pain-free execution under the Constitution.

Even if the effect of the two drugs used by Ohio “presents some inherent risk of discomfort, that does not amount to cruel and unusual punishment,” Christopher Conomy, an assistant Ohio attorney general, argued in court documents last month.

The U.S. execution dilemma goes back to 2005, when the EU restricted exports of goods “for the purpose of capital punishment or for the purpose of torture.” That ban includes items such as electric chairs and lethal injection systems.

The drug shortage then started biting in 2010 when Hospira Inc., the sole U.S. manufacturer of sodium thiopental, a sedative that is part of the normal three-drug mixture, stopped production. A few months later, Hospira dropped plans to produce it in Italy because the government there asked for guarantees that it would never be used in executions.

States in 2011 switched to pentobarbital, but Denmark-based Lundbeck Inc., the drug’s only U.S.-licensed maker, faced a public backlash and quickly said it would put the medication off-limits for capital punishment through a tightly controlled distribution system.Fearing for their reputation, the companies never wanted to see their drugs used in executions.

As U.S. authorities started looking for other sources, Britain went ahead and restricted exports of sodium thiopental and other drugs at the end of 2010.

“This move underlines this government’s … moral opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances,” Business Secretary Vince Cable said then.

Germany’s government also urged pharmaceutical companies to stop exports, and the country’s three firms selling sodium thiopental promised not to sell to U.S. prison authorities.

The EU then updated its export regulation in late 2011 to ban the sale of eight drugs — including pentobarbital and sodium thiopental — if the purpose is to use them in lethal injections.

That produced a flurry of action in the United States. In May 2012 Missouri announced it would switch to using the anesthetic propofol, infamous for its role in Michael Jackson’s overdose death. But propofol, too, was manufactured in Europe, by Germany’s Fresenius Kabi.Missouri’s plan prompted an outcry across Europe and the EU threatened to restrict propofol exports. That in turn provoked a medical outcry in the U.S. because propofol is used in about 95 percent of surgical procedures requiring an anesthetic, according to the American Society of Anesthesiologists.

Pharmaceutical companies around the globe have been loath to see their drugs used in executions because the market is tiny and promises close to no financial gain, while potentially exposing them to costly bad PR.

In the United States, there is a variety of reason no U.S. manufacturer will supply execution drugs, from the desire to avoid lawsuits to the makers’ own opposition to the use of such drugs in capital punishment.

Fresenius Kabi, whose slogan is “caring for life,” swiftly moved to introduce a stringent distribution control to prevent sales to U.S. prisons. Another manufacturer, Germany’s B. Braun, immediately followed suit.

In October 2012 Missouri Governor Jay Nixon expressed indignation, saying state and federal court systems, not European politicians, should decide death penalty policy. Still, a month later he backtracked and halted what was to have been the first U.S. execution using propofol.Missouri and other states have since also resorted to custom-made batches of drugs, while refusing to divulge which pharmacy produced them — as in the case being heard Tuesday.

The secrecy has led to new lawsuits, not least after safety concerns over such drugs arose in 2012 after contaminated injections from a Massachusetts facility caused a meningitis outbreak that killed 64 people and sickened hundreds.

An attorney for McGuire’s family supported the European position.

“I think it’s right for the (pharmaceutical) companies to draw a line when people are using the drugs for the wrong purposes,” said Jon Paul Rion.

In principle, there are a number of painkillers, sedatives and paralyzing agents that can kill if administered in high doses. But switching drugs will invite new lawsuits and could involve drawn-out bureaucratic or legislative delays — in addition to doubts about how quickly and mercifully these drugs can kill.

“Such botched executions go some way to debunking the myth that lethal injection is a humane way to kill someone,” said Reprieve’s Foa.

When Europeans criticize the U.S., they frequently cite the inequality of health care and the continued use of capital punishment.

Europe has seen autocratic or totalitarian regimes corrupting justice throughout the 20th century with people being executed for political reasons or without fair trial, resulting in strong opposition to the death penalty after World War II. Western Germany forbade capital punishment after the war, just as Italy did. France, which gave the world the word guillotine, decapitated only a few people after WW II amid increasing public opposition.

“There will be no lasting peace either in the heart of individuals or in social customs until death is outlawed,” French Literature Nobel Prize winner Albert Camus wrote in 1957 in an influential essay.

France’s last execution now dates back almost 40 years. In Eastern Europe, the death penalty was abolished after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

An international AP poll in 2007 found that about 70 percent of those surveyed in the U.S. favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder. In Germany, Italy and Spain only about 30 percent did so.

Overall, experts say Europe’s judicial system is more oriented toward rehabilitation, not punishment. That is also reflected in drastically lower incarceration rates: Across the EU, about 130 people per 100,000 inhabitants are behind bars compared to 920 in the U.S, according to EU and U.S. Justice Department figures.

The death penalty has been abolished or suspended in all developed economies, except for the U.S. and Japan. Execution rankings have routinely shown the U.S. in the unusual company of China, Iran, Saudi-Arabia, Iraq and Pakistan.Vietnam has faced a similar dilemma to the United States, finding it difficult to import execution drugs from Europe since it switched from firing squads to lethal injection in 2011 on humanitarian grounds.

The anti-capital punishment camp has also gained ground in the U.S.

The number of U.S. executions has declined in recent years — from a peak of 98 in 1999 to 39 last year. Some states have abolished the death penalty, and those that carry on find executions increasingly difficult to conduct because of the drug scarcity and doubts about how well they work.

Public support for capital punishment also appears to be retreating. Last year, 60 percent of Americans polled said they favor the death penalty for convicted murderers, the lowest level measured since 1972, according to Gallup.

To counter the drug shortages lawmakers in some death penalty states — Missouri, Virginia and Wyoming — are now considering bringing back execution methods such as firing squads, electrocutions and gas chambers.

There are still about 3,000 inmates on death row.

AP writers Melinda Deslatte in Baton Rouge, La., and Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio, contributed to this report.

ARIZONA: Jodi Arias Trial Sentencing Pushed Back

february 16, 2014

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

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

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

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

(Source: The Epoch Times)

Missouri: Judge Blocks Sale of Drug for Execution

february 13, 2014

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

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

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

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

(Source:NYT)

Ex-governors want California death penalty reform

february 14, 2014

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He declined comment on the proposed initiative Thursday.

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

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

(Source: AP, Sacramento Bee)