death row inmates

TENNESSEE: Measure allowing use of electric chair for executions headed to governor

April 18, 2014

Tennessee could electrocute death row inmates if lethal injection drugs are unavailable under legislation that’s headed for Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s desk.

The Senate voted 25-3 on Thursday to agree to changes to the legislation made by the House, which approved the measure 68-13 the day before.

The legislation keeps lethal injection as the preferred method for executions, but allows the electric chair if the state were unable to obtain the necessary drugs or if lethal injections were found unconstitutional.

And electrocutions would be allowed regardless of when the crime was committed.

Under Tennessee law, death row inmates could choose to be electrocuted if their crimes were committed before 1999, when lethal injection became the preferred method.

There are 76 inmates on Tennessee’s death row, including 1 woman.

(source: Associated Press)

TENNESSEE -Senate authorizes electric chair for executions

April 10, 2014

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) – The Senate has voted to allow the state to electrocute death row inmates if lethal injection drugs cannot be obtained.

The measure sponsored by Sen. Ken Yager passed on a 23-3 vote on Wednesday.

The Harriman Republican said current law allows the state to use its alternate execution method only when lethal injection drugs are not legally available. But Yager said there was no provision for what do if there was a shortage of those drugs.

The state’s lethal injection protocol uses a sedative commonly used to euthanize animals, but states are exhausting supplies.

The state’s last electrocution was in 2007. The companion bill is awaiting a House floor vote.

Previous story

A plan to bring back the electric chair is making its way through the Tennessee legislature, though some lawmakers have voiced uneasiness about returning to an execution method the state largely had abandoned.

A House committee approved a bill Tuesday morning that would make electrocution the state’s method for killing inmates sentenced to death if lethal injection were declared unconstitutional or the drugs needed to carry it out were unavailable. But a handful of members said they have reservations about the electric chair, which the state has used only once since 1960.

(www.wbir.com)

“It seems barbaric to me,” said state Rep. Darren Jernigan, D-Nashville. “I’d rather go with the gas chamber, myself. … The electric chair bothers me.”

Tennessee switched to lethal injection when it brought back the death penalty in the 1990s, but lawmakers gave inmates the option of choosing the electric chair for crimes committed before Jan. 1, 1999. One inmate, Daryl Keith Holton, was electrocuted in 2007.

In recent years, lethal injection has come under scrutiny. Death penalty opponents have pressed manufacturers to stop making available the drugs used in lethal injections, and courts have begun to weigh whether the method really produces the painless death that supporters claim. That has led state officials to reconsider electrocution, which the attorney general said last month never has been found unconstitutional.

State officials nonetheless expect House Bill 2476 would be challenged in court if it were to pass. Jernigan, sighing heavily, spelled out why, describing the damage electrocution does to the body. But state Rep. Dennis Powers, the Jacksboro Republican who filed the bill, stood by the measure.

“What seems barbaric is someone that’s been on death row 29 years,” he said. “This is really not about the death penalty. The death penalty is already the law in Tennessee. This is about how we do it.”

Jernigan responded by noting that some states allow death by firing squad. State Rep. Kent Williams, I-Elizabethton, said that method did not phase him either.

“That’d be the easiest way to go,” he said, adding, “I don’t know why we got away from hanging.”

“We’re wanting to make sure that these people on death row go ahead and get the just sentence that they deserve,” Powers replied. But some members still weren’t convinced.

“I just kind of feel that some kind of injection is a more humane way … than it is, I think, to just fry somebody,” said state Rep. Johnny Shaw, D-Bolivar.

“Our job is not to judge. Our job is to arrange the meeting between the (defendant) and the creator, for him to judge,” Powers said.

HB 2476 now heads to the House Finance Committee and could be voted on by the full House of Representatives by the end of the legislative session. The state Senate is scheduled to vote on companion legislation, Senate Bill 2580, on Wednesday.

TENNESSEE- Execution date set for inmate on death row since 1978 – Donald Wayne

april 9, 2014

Tennessee wants to execute death row’s longest-standing resident.

Donald Wayne Strouth, 55, has been on death row since 1978 for the murder of a second-hand store owner in Kingsport. He’s accused of knocking out and slashing the throat of Jimmy Keegan in a robbery, leaving his body behind in his store, where his wife later found him.

Strouth, who was known to carry a hawkbill knife, was seen by witnesses afterward with blood still on his hands.

He outlived the man who was convicted alongside him, Jeffrey Dicks. Dicks, like most death row inmates over the past decade or so, died not by execution but by natural causes when he suffered a heart attack in 1999.

But Tuesday, Tennessee’s Supreme Court set a date for Strouth’s execution: March 15, 2016.

It may seem far off, but the justices built in time for an ongoing lawsuit dealing with the secrecy of Tennessee’s death penalty to run its course. Eleven death row inmates are suing the state to turn over details about how it plans to perform its lethal injection, trying to overcome a 2013 law that sealed many of those details behind a veil of secrecy. They argue that if they don’t know what the state is using to kill them and where it came from, there’s no way to know whether the execution meets constitutional safeguards against “cruel and unusual punishment.”

That lawsuit, which is ongoing, has pushed back at least one execution date.

Strouth has argued that he suffers from brain damage and mental illness, but the state’s Supreme Court was unswayed.

He is at least the 10th death row inmate to have an execution date. Billy Ray Irick, who raped and murdered a 7-year-old Knoxville girl in 1985, is scheduled to die first, on Oct. 7. The state is awaiting an execution date for an 11th inmate.

Tennessee has not executed a prisoner since 2009.

Tennessee sets execution dates for 10 men

february 6, 2014

The state of Tennessee plans to execute 10 death row inmates over the next two years after changing the drug protocol to be used in lethal injections, officials said Wednesday.

The state is scheduled to execute the condemned prisoners between April 22, 2014, and Nov. 17, 2015, the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts confirmed. Three executions are scheduled this year and seven in 2015.

Gov. Bill Haslam, noting that three execution orders were handed down Friday by the state Supreme Court, told The Tennessean Wednesday that the decision to seek the executions didn’t go through him. But he said he agrees with it.

State officials asked the Tennessee Supreme Court in October for execution dates for 10 inmates, the highest number of condemned people the state has ever sought to kill at one time. The court has since ordered execution dates for nine of those men. Another inmate, Nickolus Johnson, whose execution was sought separately from the other 10, is scheduled to die April 22.

Dates have not yet been set for Lee Hall, the other man in the October group, or Donald Wayne Strouth, for whom the state requested an execution date in December.

Kelley Henry, who supervises capital punishment defense cases with the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Nashville, said it was unfortunate that so many death row inmates were being grouped together. Henry and other attorneys have asked a Davidson County judge to halt the executions over questions about the drug the state now plans to use.

“Each and every one of these cases has a story that is an example of how the death penalty system in Tennessee is broken,” she said Wednesday. “They each have different stories of ineffective counsel, of evidence that was suppressed by the state, stories of trauma and mental abuse that were never presented to a jury or a judge.”

(Source: The Tennessean)

With 132 Death Row Inmates Readied for Execution, Lawyers Contest Fast-Track Law Before Florida Justices

February 4, 2014 (flaglerlive.com)

A new law intended to speed up executions did little to change the status quo, an attorney representing the state told the Florida Supreme Court on Tuesday.

But a lawyer representing Death Row inmates argued that the “Timely Justice Act” is premised on a faulty list that violates the constitutionally protected separation of powers as well as inmates’ rights to due process.

More than 150 lawyers and Death Row inmates are challenging the law, signed by Gov. Rick Scott in June.

The law requires the Supreme Court clerk to give the governor a certified list of Death Row inmates whose initial state and federal appeals have been exhausted. The law orders the governor to sign death warrants for the condemned on the list within 30 days and to direct the warden to schedule their executions within 180 days — but only once the executive clemency process has been completed. Scott and his lawyers maintain that the clemency process ends when the governor signs a warrant.

In October, then-Supreme Court Clerk Tom Hall certified to Scott an initial list of 132 inmates who are at least partially “warrant ready” under the requirements of the law.

Scott has signed four death warrants since the law went into effect. Prior to that, Scott ordered nine executions since taking office in 2011.

Marty McClain, who represented the lawyers and inmates during oral arguments before the court on Tuesday morning, said the “warrant ready” list was flawed and included some Death Row convicts whose litigation was still pending.

But Assistant Attorney General Carol Dittmar told the justices that “the list is just to provide for information purposes” and did not change the process by which warrants are signed by the governor. Lawmakers who sponsored the legislation said it was intended to shorten the time between conviction and execution, which now is longer than two decades.

“It seems that the argument being made is that the Timely Justice Act was all for show and didn’t actually change anything,” McClain argued. “Certainly that was not what was expressed by the Legislature at the time. They meant to make changes.”

Some of the justices took issue with McClain’s argument that the Legislature had encroached on their power by forcing their administrator to generate the list.

Justice R. Fred Lewis said he found “difficult to understand why it’s unconstitutional for this court to give information” because that is “very natural and normal” within court operations.

Justice Barbara Pariente suggested that, although “we may not all agree that this is the best policy,” the court could add more information to the list and give lawyers representing Death Row inmates the chance to show why their clients should not be included on it before sending it to the governor.

And she pointed out that there is nothing in the new law that prohibits the court from issuing a stay once a warrant has been signed, pointing to the case of Ray Swafford, whose execution was halted by the court hours before he was scheduled to be put to death in 1990. Swafford, who was deemed “warrant ready” by Hall in October, has spent 28 years on Death Row for the abduction, rape and murder of a gas station attendant in Volusia County.

In November, the Florida high court vacated Swafford’s sentence and ordered a new trial based on new DNA evidence. But McClain said the Swafford case was a perfect example why the law is problematic.

Swafford had at least five appeals before the court ordered a new trial in the fall, McClain pointed out.

“Twenty-one years after the conviction, the information develops. He could have been executed in 1990,” McClain said.

Why so many death row inmates in America will die of old age

february 3, 2014 (economist.com)

GARY ALVORD, a Florida man who was sentenced to death for strangling three women, died in May 2013—of natural causes. He had been on death row for nearly 40 years. The state never executed him because he was “too crazy to be killed“, as the Tampa Bay Times put it: “In 1984, he was sent to a state hospital in Chattahoochee to be restored to competence. But doctors there refused to treat him, citing the ethical dilemma of making a patient well just so that he could be killed. He was quietly returned to death row in 1987 and remained there ever since. His final appeal expired in 1998.”

Alvord’s case was extreme, but condemned prisoners in America typically spend a very long time waiting to die. The appeals process drags on for decades. It is endlessly painstaking because no one wants to see an innocent prisoner executed. Even the most enthusiastic advocates of capital punishment know that such a miscarriage of justice would undermine their cause. For prisoners who are actually put to death, the average time that elapses between sentence and execution has risen from six years in the mid-1980s to 16.5 years now. And even that startling figure makes the process sound quicker than it is, since most condemned prisoners will never be put to death. It’s simple maths.

At the end of 2011, there were 3,082 prisoners on state and federal death rows in America. That year, 43 were executed. At the current rate (which is slowing) a condemned prisoner has a one-in-72 chance of being executed each year. Since the average death row inmate was 28 when first convicted, it seems unlikely that more than a fraction of them will ever meet the executioner. In 2011 24 condemned prisoners died of natural causes and 70 had their sentences commuted or overturned. (There were 80 fresh death sentences passed in 2011, so the number of people on death row shrank by 57.)

We can expect the number who die of old age to increase. The death penalty was restored only in 1976, so nearly everyone on death row was convicted after that date, and most were young when convicted. As they get older, more will start to die each year of heart attacks, strokes and cancer. Conditions on death row are grim; inmates age fast. They are often locked up in a solitary cell for 23 hours a day. Throughout this time, they live in fear that soon they will be strapped to a gurney and pumped full of lethal chemicals. Some lawyers argue that death row itself amounts to a cruel and unusual punishment of the sort the constitution forbids.

USA: Death Penalty Fast Facts

ere’s a look at what you need to know about the death penalty in the United States.

Facts:

Capital punishment is legal in 32 U.S. states.

Approximately 3,125 inmates in 35 states are awaiting execution.

Connecticut, Maryland and New Mexico have abolished the death penalty, but it is not retroactive. Prisoners on death row in those states will still be executed.

Since 1976, when the death penalty was reinstated by the U.S. Supreme Court, 1,338 people have been executed. (as of July 2013)

Japan is the only industrial democracy besides the United States that has the death penalty.

Federal Government:

The U.S. government and U.S. military have approximately 66 people awaiting execution. (as of January 2013)

The U.S. government has executed 3 people since 1976. (as of July 2013)

Females:

There are 61 women on death row in the United States. (as of January 2013)

13 women have been executed since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976. (as of July 2013)

Juveniles:

March 1, 2005 – Roper v. Simmons. The Supreme Court rules that the execution of juveniles is unconstitutional. This means that 16 and 17-year-olds are ineligible for execution.

22 juveniles between the ages of 16 and 17 were executed between 1976 and 2005.

Clemency:

Clemency Processes around the Country

273 clemencies have been granted in the United States since 1976.

For federal death row inmates, the president alone has the power to grant a pardon.

Timeline:

1834 – Pennsylvania becomes the 1st state to move executions into correctional facilities, ending public executions.

1838 – Discretionary death penalty statutes are enacted in Tennessee.

1846 – Michigan becomes the 1st state to abolish the death penalty for all crimes except treason.

1890 – William Kemmler becomes the 1st person executed by electrocution.

1907-1917 – 9 states abolish the death penalty for all crimes or strictly limit it. By 1920, 5 of those states had reinstated it.

1924 – The use of cyanide gas is introduced as an execution method.

1930s – Executions reach the highest levels in American history, averaging 167 per year.

June 29, 1972 – Furman v. Georgia. The Supreme Court effectively voids 40 death penalty statutes and suspends the death penalty.

1976 – Gregg v. Georgia. The death penalty is reinstated.

January 17, 1977 – A 10-year moratorium on executions ends with the execution of Gary Gilmore by firing squad in Utah.

1977 – Oklahoma becomes the 1st state to adopt lethal injection as a means of execution.

December 7, 1982 – Charles Brooks becomes the 1st person executed by lethal injection.

1984 – Velma Barfield of North Carolina becomes the 1st woman executed since reinstatement of the death penalty.

1986 – Ford v. Wainwright. Execution of insane persons is banned.

1987 – McCleskey v. Kemp. Racial disparities are not recognized as a constitutional violation of “equal protection of the law” unless intentional racial discrimination against the defendant can be shown.

1988 – Thompson v. Oklahoma. Executions of offenders age 15 and younger at the time of their crimes are declared unconstitutional.

1989 – Stanford v. Kentucky, and Wilkins v. Missouri. The Eighth Amendment does not prohibit the death penalty for crimes committed at age sixteen or seventeen.

1994 – President Bill Clinton signs the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act that expands the federal death penalty.

1996 – The last hanging takes place in Delaware.

January 31, 2000 – A moratorium on executions is declared by Illinois Governor George Ryan. Since 1976, Illinois is the 1st state to block executions.

2002 – Atkins v. Virginia. The Supreme Court rules that the execution of mentally retarded defendants violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

January 2003 – Before leaving office, Governor George Ryan grants clemency to all of the remaining 167 inmates on Illinois’s death row, due to the flawed process that led to the death sentences.

June 2004 – New York’s death penalty law is declared unconstitutional by the state’s high court.

March 1, 2005 – Roper v. Simmons. The Supreme Court rules that the execution of juvenile killers is unconstitutional. The 5-4 decision tosses out the death sentence of a Missouri man who was 17-years-old when he murdered a St. Louis area woman in 1993.

December 2, 2005 – The execution of Kenneth Lee Boyd in North Carolina marks the 1,000th time the death penalty has been carried out since it was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976. Boyd, 57, is executed for the 1988 murders of his wife, Julie Curry Boyd, and father-in-law, Thomas Dillard Curry.

June 12, 2006 – The Supreme Court rules that death row inmates can challenge the use of lethal injection as a method of execution.

December 15, 2006 – Florida Governor Jeb Bush suspends the death penalty after the execution of prisoner Angel Diaz. Diaz had to be given 2 injections, and it took more than 30 minutes for him to die.

December 15, 2006 – Judge Jeremy Fogel of the U.S. District Court in San Jose rules that lethal injection in California violates the constitutional prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

December 17, 2007 – Governor Jon Corzine signs legislation banning the death penalty in New Jersey. The death sentences of eight men are commuted to life terms.

September 2007 – The U.S. Supreme Court takes up the case of Baze and Bowling v. Rees, in which 2 Kentucky death row inmates challenged Kentucky’s use of a 3-drug mixture for death by lethal injection.

December 31, 2007 – Due to the de facto moratorium on executions, pending the Supreme Court’s ruling, only 42 people in the U.S. are executed in 2007. It is the lowest total in more than 10 years.

April 14, 2008 – In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court upholds Kentucky’s use of lethal injection. Between September 2007, when the Court took on the case, and April 2008 no one was executed in the U.S.

March 18, 2009 – Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico signs legislation repealing the death penalty in his state. His actions will not affect 2 prisoners currently on death row, Robert Fry, who killed a woman in 2000, and Tim Allen, who killed a 17-year-old girl in 1994.

November 13, 2009 – Ohio becomes the 1st state to switch to a method of lethal injection using a single drug, rather than the 3-drug method used by other states.

March 9, 2011 – Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn announces that he has signed legislation eliminating the death penalty in his state, more than 10 years after the state halted executions.

March 16, 2011 – The Drug Enforcement Agency seizes Georgia’s supply of thiopental, over questions of where the state obtained the drug. U.S. manufacturer Hospira stopped producing the drug in 2009. The countries that still produce the drug do not allow it to be exported to the U.S. for use in lethal injections.

May 20, 2011 – The Georgia Department of Corrections announces that pentobarbital will be substituted for sodium thiopental in the three-drug lethal injection process.

July 2011 – Lundbeck Inc., the company that makes pentobarbital (brand name Nembutal), the drug used in lethal injections, announces it will restrict the use of its product from prisons carrying out capital punishment. “After much consideration, we have determined that a restricted distribution system is the most meaningful means through which we can restrict the misuse of Nembutal. While the company has never sold the product directly to prisons and therefore can’t make guarantees, we are confident that our new distribution program will play a substantial role in restricting prisons’ access to Nembutal for misuse as part of lethal injection.” Lundbeck also states that it “adamantly opposes the distressing misuse of our product in capital punishment.”

July 7, 2011 – Humberto Leal Garcia, Jr., a Mexican national, is executed by lethal injection, in Texas for the 1994 kidnap, rape and murder of Adra Sauceda in San Antonio. Despite pleas from the U.S. State Department and the White House, Texas Governor Rick Perry does not grant clemency and the U.S. Supreme Court does not intervene.

November 22, 2011 – Governor John Kitzhaber of Oregon grants a reprieve to Gary Haugen, who was scheduled to be executed December 6. Kitzhaber, a licensed physician, also puts a moratorium on all state executions for the remainder of his term in office.

April 25, 2012 – Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy signs S.B. 280, An Act Revising the Penalty for Capital Felonies, into law. The law goes into effect immediately and replaces the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole. The law is not retroactive to those already on death row. June 22, 2012 – The Arkansas Supreme Court strikes down the state’s execution law, calling the form of lethal injection the state uses unconstitutional.

August 7, 2012 – The Supreme Court allows the execution of Marvin Wilson, 54, a Texas inmate with low IQ.

November 6, 2012 – A measure to repeal the death penalty in California fails.

May 2, 2013 – Maryland’s governor signs a bill repealing the death penalty. The legislation goes into effect October 1.

June 26, 2013 – Texas executes its 500th prisoner since 1982, Kimberly McCarthy, for the 1997 murder of Dorothy Booth. McCarthy is the 1st female executed in the U.S. since 2010.

(source: CNN)

How hot is death row?

A federal judge Tuesday ordered temperature data be collected for 21 straight days in advance of an Aug. 5 trial of a lawsuit by three condemned killers who claim extreme heat indexes at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola amount to cruel and unusual punishment.

The suit, filed last month, alleges heat indexes on death row at the prison reached 172 degrees Fahrenheit (172 °F is equal to about 77.8 °C) last year and 195 degrees (90.5) in 2011. The suit contends the heat index on all six death-row tiers was above 103 degrees every day last August, and that inmates on one tier endured heat indexes of more than 126 degrees “on 85 days between May and August.”

Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Jackson’s order Tuesday came at the conclusion of a court hearing during which an attorney for the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections and the prison called the inmates’ data “greatly exaggerated,” “faulty” and “generally incompetent.”

A lawyer representing death-row inmates Elzie Ball, James Magee and Nathaniel Code countered that the men, each of whom suffers from hypertension, face the very real possibility of heat-related illness — including heat stroke, paralysis and heart disease — and even death.

The suit asked Jackson to issue an order compelling prison officials to maintain a heat index on death row of no more than 88 degrees.

“The court will not grant the injunction today. That is the fair and appropriate thing to do,” the judge told both sides Tuesday while noting that even death-row inmates are entitled to constitutional protections. He said more evidence on the suit’s claims needs to be gathered.

Jackson ordered the two sides to meet and file a joint plan by July 9 concerning what evidence will be collected and shared. If a plan is submitted, the judge said, he will approve it July 10. Otherwise, Jackson said he will issue his own plan on that date.

The judge specified that he wants temperature data collected for three straight weeks beginning July 15. He scheduled an evidentiary hearing, or trial, for Aug. 5. Jackson also urged the parties to try to settle the case.

Nilay Vora, an attorney for Ball, Magee and Code, argued to the judge that the air temperature at Angola’s death row is “consistently” above 90 degrees, with heat indexes even higher.

Jacqueline Wilson, an attorney for state Department of Public Safety and Corrections and the state penitentiary, noted that the death-row tiers offer industrial-sized fans — one for every two cells, ice in coolers and inmates are allowed to take one shower per day.

“There is moving air,” she said of the cross-ventilation system.

“That can be hot air,” the judge shot back.

Vora argued that blowing hot air can increase the likelihood of heat-related illness. He also alleged that the water temperature of the showers is 106 to 117 degrees, and added that the temperature range for a “cold” shower should be in the 70s.

Each death-row inmates’ cell has running hot and cold water, Wilson added.

Vora noted that 10 heat-related deaths in Texas prisons have been reported over the years.

“How about in Louisiana? How about at Angola?” Jackson asked.

Vora, who did not cite any heat-related prison deaths in the state, said the plaintiffs’ attorneys would be happy to work with the state defendants to come up with a plan to ease the heat issue at the prison’s death row.

“The department takes its job very seriously,” Wilson argued during the hearing, stressing that corrections officials want inmates to serve their sentences “in a humane way.”

Ball, 60, has been on death row since August 1997 for the May 15, 1996, shooting death of beer deliveryman Ben Scorsone during the armed robbery of a lounge in Gretna. Witnesses said Ball knocked Scorsone to the floor before firing three shots.

Magee, 35, was convicted for the April 2007 shotgun murders of his estranged wife, 28-year-old Adrienne Magee, and their 5-year-old son, Zach, on a street in the Tall Timbers subdivision north of Mandeville.

Code, 57, is on death row for the 1985 murders of four people at a house in Shreveport. A jury convicted Code for the bathtub drowning of Vivian Chaney, 34; the stabbing and slashing death of Chaney’s 17-year-old daughter, Carlitha; and the shooting deaths of Chaney’s brother, Jerry Culbert, and Chaney’s boyfriend, Billy Joe Harris.

Medical records for Ball, Magee and Code show none of the men lodged heat-related complaints over the past several years, according to documents filed by the state in response to the suit.

Records filed by the state also indicate there are 82 men on death row at Angola. Those inmates are allowed out of their cells one hour every day and are allowed to go outside for one hour three times a week. (The Advocate)

Idaho high court considers death penalty reviews. Case of Timothy Dunlap

November 8, 2012 http://www.seattlepi.com

OISE, Idaho  — The Idaho Supreme Court is deciding just how much of each death penalty case they must consider under Idaho’s mandatory review law, and the ruling could dramatically change the landscape of capital punishment in Idaho.

The issues arose in the case of Timothy Dunlap, who is sentenced to death in both Idaho and Ohio for two murders committed during a 10-day span in 1991.

Dunlap was arrested in Idaho after prosecutors said he used a sawed-off shotgun to kill 25-year-old bank teller Tonya Crane during a robbery in Soda Springs. After his arrest, police said he confessed to murdering his girlfriend, Belinda Bolanos, with a crossbow and dumping her body along the Ohio River 10 days before Crane’s murder.

Dunlap was convicted in Ohio and sentenced to death there for Bolanos‘ murder; but because he was convicted in Idaho first, Idaho is first in line for his execution.

It’s not uncommon for death row inmates to appeal multiple issues before multiple courts, all at the same time. Now 44, Dunlap is no exception, and his appeal before the Idaho Supreme Court includes more than 50 different issues.

The decision from the Idaho Supreme Court on what must be reviewed could dramatically limit the types of appeals that death row defendants can bring.

The Idaho Legislature created the mandatory review law in 1977, requiring the Idaho Supreme Court to review every death sentence whether the defendant wants them to or not.

The law was designed to do two things: First, meet federal requirements that the death penalty be imposed only on a narrow group of criminals whose crimes were worthy of such a severe sanction; and second, speed up the appeals process by ensuring there were no problems with the way the death penalty was imposed.

But Idaho Deputy Attorney General LaMont Anderson says the law has actually slowed death row cases because the Idaho Supreme Court has never defined the scope of the mandatory review.

That means that once the mandatory review is done, the federal appeals court assumes the Idaho Supreme Court justices have considered all the sentencing issues in a case, even if a particular issue was never mentioned before the lower court. Many types of appeals can’t be brought before the federal courts until they’ve been considered by a state court, but since the federal courts have interpreted Idaho’s mandatory review law as all-encompassing, virtually no sentencing appeal is off limits, Anderson contends.

But Shannon Romero, Dunlap’s defense attorney with the state’s appellate public defender’s office, maintains that the Idaho Supreme Court has implemented the mandatory review rule correctly. The Idaho Supreme Court has an obligation to make sure that the death penalty is being carried out in a way that’s constitutional, and that means considering everything, Romero contends.

The Idaho Attorney General’s office wants to treat death penalty cases like any other criminal case, and that’s just not right, she told the court.

The U.S. Supreme Court “has long recognized that death is different from every form of punishment,” Romero wrote in a brief to the court, in large part because it is totally irrevocable.

The justices took the matter under advisement and didn’t say when they would issue a decision

California’s Death Penalty: All Cost and No Benefit by Danny Glover and Mike Farrell

November 4, 2012 http://www.huffingtonpost.com

While many important issues will be decided this Tuesday, one stands out for its national and historic importance: In California, the future of the death penalty hangs in the balance with Proposition 34. Also known as the SAFE California Act of 2012, Prop 34 will replace the death penalty with life in prison with no possibility of parole.

The fact is, California’s death penalty is all cost and no benefit. The latest Field Poll, out Friday, shows that more voters than ever before support replacing the death penalty, and that Prop 34 is leading in the polls. The Field Poll says 45 percent of likely California voters support Prop 34, while 38 percent oppose. Of those who have already voted, a full 48 percent said they voted yes, while 42 percent voted no.

A big reason for the spectacular surge in support is people’s awareness that the Golden State is flat broke. Voters now understand that the death penalty is far more expensive than life in prison with no chance of parole. They realize that California has sunk billions of dollars into a broken system — while most death row inmates die of old age.

The costs come from special housing, special lawyers and special trials imposed by the U.S. Supreme Court to lessen the risk of executing another innocent person. And those costs really add up. According to The Legislative Analyst’s Office, a nonpartisan government agency, Prop 34 will save the state $130 million every year. A comprehensive five-year study by Federal Judge Arthur Alarcón (who is pro-death penalty) and Loyola Law Professor Paula Mitchell (who is not) showed the state has spent $4 billion on the death penalty since 1978. They’ve just updated that report to show that California is on track to spend $5 to $7 billion, over and above the cost of a sentence of life in prison without parole, between now and 2050. Five to seven billion dollars!

It’s staggering to realize that with all those billions spent, California has executed only 13 inmates since 1978, at a cost of about $307 million per execution.

But money’s not everything. The fact is that the death penalty is not making us any safer. A shocking 46 percent of murders and 56 percent of reported rapes go unsolved in California every year. California Crime Victims for Alternatives to the Death Penalty released a report yesterdayshowing that underfunded, overburdened crime labs with long backlogs can’t process the evidence needed to solve crimes. Prop 34 would direct $100 million of the savings into local law enforcement programs and activities, like DNA testing, fingerprint analysis, and better funding of local crime labs, so we can find the criminals responsible and put them in jail. It’s no secret that the best way to prevent crime is to solve it.

California’s Prop 34 vote has all the markings of a historic shift away from the death penalty in the United States. Support for undoing this ineffective policy in the nation’s largest and most populous state is broad and deep, and includes some surprising voices. Supporters include the lead campaigner for the 1978 death penalty initiative, Ron Briggs, the author of that original law, Don Heller, former LA District Attorney Gil Garcetti and staunch conservative Bill O’Reilly. Jeanne Woodford, a life-long corrections professional who served as Warden of San Quentin and oversaw four executions is the official spokesperson for the initiative. The Sacramento Bee even reversed its 155-year support for the death penalty to endorse YES on 34, joining 47 major newspapers from across the state.

The vote in California will be felt far and wide. Our state has the dubious distinction of housing nearly one-quarter of the nation’s death row inmates and the most expensive death row in the nation. Tragically, California leads the nation in wrongful convictions at 123, according to theNational Registry of Exonerations. So if any state could make another fatal mistake, it’s this one. Passing Prop 34 will ensure that doesn’t happen.

What’s clear is that the death penalty is broken beyond repair, and it’s time to replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole. We support Prop 34 — and we encourage California voters to get the facts and vote YES on 34 on Tuesday.