death row

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.

FLORIDA – Death Row inmate demands Irish government help on appeal – Michael Fitzpatrick

February 2, 2014

Reprieve, a UK-based legal charity, has censured the Irish government for failing to provide adequate support to Michael Fitzpatrick, an Irish citizen who spent over a decade on death row in Florida and is now up for a retrial. The Irish government has denied the allegation.

Fitzpatrick, who was born in the US, was granted dual Irish citizenship in September 2013. He was eligible to apply through one of his grandmothers, who was born in Tipperary and immigrated to America.

According to a statement released by Reprieve, which aids in cases around the world where it feels human rights are most at risk, the Irish government refused to send a representative to a key hearing in Fitzpatrick’s case on January 10.

“It is standard practice for government officials to provide extensive consular assistance to nationals imprisoned abroad, including attending hearings and trials to ensure that minimum standards are upheld,” the release said.

Capital punishment was abolished in Ireland in 1964.

Fitzpatrick, 51, was convicted in 2001 for the 1996 rape and first-degree murder of Laura Romines, 28, who was found in the early hours of August 18 wandering a rural road in Land O’Lakes, Florida, naked and with her throat slit. She was hospitalized and died three weeks later.

Romines told first responders at the scene that she had been attacked by a man named “Steve,” who investigators first presumed to be Stephen Kirk, a motel security guard. Romines had been staying with Kirk and his wife. Kirk was exculpated by a “significant amount” of evidence, including numerous witnesses who had seen him at work at the time of the attack.

Romines’ boyfriend, Joe Galbert, who had recently kicked her out of the Motel 6 room where they had been living, was eliminated as a suspect because he was in jail at the time.

Police zeroed in on Fitzpatrick, who had been working as a pizza delivery man, because witnesses reported seeing him with Romines at various points the day before, and because the semen found by a SAVE (sexual assault victim examination) performed on Romines at the hospital was identified as his. After first denying that he had any sexual encounter with Romines, Fitzpatrick claimed that it was consensual and had taken place on the morning of the 17th.

Fingernail scrapings taken from Romines during the SAVE test indicated the potential involvement of another, unidentified male.

In 2001, Fitzpatrick was sentenced with 30 years in prison and the death penalty, to be served concurrently. His direct appeal was affirmed.

His post-conviction appeal began in 2005, and on June 27 of last year the Florida Supreme Court unanimously upheld the circuit court’s decision that Fitzpatrick should be granted a retrial due to overwhelming evidence that his first attorney, Bill Ebel, failed to defend him adequately.

Mark Gruber, one of the attorneys from Capital Collateral Regional Counsel who handled Fitzpatrick’s post-conviction appeal, told IrishCentral that Ebel “had the case for four years and never obtained the assistance of anyone. Not a co-counsel, not an expert witness, not a private investigator. The prosecution brought in expert witnesses, a medical examiner, and there just wasn’t any rebuttal. . . . The prosecutor made that exact argument during closing arguments to the jury: ‘Here’s all this scientific evidence that we brought in and there hasn’t been any challenge to it.’ So that’s what we did in post-conviction.”

The medical experts consulted for the post-conviction proceedings stated that many of the conclusions drawn by the state in Fitzpatrick’s first trial were inaccurate or unfounded, and that some of the experts it brought to the stand were not qualified to testify in that capacity.

After Fitzpatrick’s citizenship was confirmed in September, Reprieve asked the Irish government to become involved in his case. Soon after, the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) issued a release stating that they were “providing consular assistance to Mr. Fitzpatrick and [would] notify the relevant US authorities of our interest in the case.”

At the January 10 hearing, the state was attempting to link Fitzpatrick to the unsolved 1992 murder of a woman in Tampa, FL. According to Fitzpatrick’s current attorney, Phil Hindahl, the hearing has been extended and will continue on February 27.

In Reprieve’s most recent release, Maya Foa, Director of the death penalty team at Reprieve, said: “Michael has already spent more than ten years on death row because of a horrifically unfair first trial. The Irish government could step in to ensure that history does not repeat itself and yet they are refusing to do even the bare minimum.”

In response to inquiries made to the Consulate General of Ireland in Atlanta, under whose jurisdiction Florida falls, the DFA Press Office stated via email that the department is “offering full consular assistance to Mr. Michael Fitzpatrick and will continue to do so as required. . . . We have notified the relevant US authorities of our interest in the case, which is going through normal judicial procedure in the United States.

“Departmental representatives would not routinely attend such hearings, particularly when we are satisfied that the Irish citizen involved has full access to legal counsel. We do maintain contact with the citizen’s lawyers to ensure that we are informed about proceedings, and we are also in contact with the NGO Reprieve on this case.”

The email also noted that, although the Irish government is not automatically entitled to consular prison visits with American citizens being tried in a US court, they had “sought and were granted one, which was undertaken by the Consul General Paul Gleason based in Atlanta in October 2013.”

Fitzpatrick’s attorney confirmed this. “I’ve had contact with the Consulate General of Ireland [in Atlanta] and I think that they intend on appearing in future hearings. As far as the hearing on January 10, for some reason they weren’t able to attend. I do know that [Atlanta Consul General] Paul Gleason, has been to the local jail and has met with Mr. Fitzpatrick. It was several months ago, but he has offered and is providing consular services, whatever that entails. . . so that’s their role right now as far as their input and their participation in the trial.”

The communications officers at Reprieve declined to provide further information as to what steps they would like to see the Irish government take on Fitzpatrick’s behalf.

Fitzpatrick’s retrial will begin on June 16.

Secrecy Behind Executions

jan, 29, 2014 (Nytimes)

It is bad enough that the death penalty is barbaric, racist and arbitrary in its application, but it is also becoming less transparent as the dwindling number of death-penalty states work to hide the means by which they kill people.

The increased secrecy around lethal-injection drug protocols is only the latest tactic of pro-death-penalty legislators and corrections officials around the country. In Missouri, this secrecy was upheld last week by a federal appeals court, which denied a condemned inmate’s constitutional claim that he is entitled to basic information about the drugs that would be used to put him to death.

Herbert Smulls was executed late Wednesday for the 1991 murder of a jewelry-store owner. Missouri refused to name the pharmacy or pharmacies involved in producing the execution drugs.

Missouri’s secrecy, along with new legislation in states such as Georgia and Tennessee, is a response to a mounting “crisis” in death-penalty states: Because many drug manufacturers now refuse to supply drugs for use in executions, states are scrambling to replenish their stocks. This often means turning to compounding pharmacies, which exist in a largely unregulated world.

In 2011, the Drug Enforcement Administration seized Georgia’s supply of one lethal-injection drug after concerns that it had been illegally imported from Britain. And last fall, Louisiana officials sought to buy drugs from an Oklahoma pharmacy, the Apothecary Shoppe, which was not licensed to provide drugs in Louisiana.

There have been multiple reports of previously untested drug combinations leading to botched executions, which is a polite way of saying the condemned person suffered greatly while being put to death. (On Jan. 16, an Ohio man, Dennis McGuire, appeared to gasp and choke after being administered a new combination of lethal-injection drugs.) States should simply admit that they don’t really know how these drug protocols will work, but instead they have tried to hide almost all information about the drugs and who makes them — increasingly through legislation.

Some courts have had little patience for this behavior. In July, a Georgia judge issued a last-minute stay of execution to one inmate, reasoning that the state’s secrecy law “makes it impossible” to show that the drug protocol violates the Eighth Amendment.

But, on Friday, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit ruled that Mr. Smulls had no constitutional claim against Missouri’s practice because he had not demonstrated that the “risk of severe pain” from the state’s intended drug protocol would be substantially greater than a readily available alternative. As the dissent argued, this “places an absurd burden on death row inmates,” who must identify “a readily available alternative method for their own executions,” even though the state won’t let them see the method it plans to use.

Meanwhile, Missouri and other states race to execute inmates using new and untested drug protocols developed on the fly and under a cowardly shroud of secrecy. Mr. Smulls was the third inmate executed in Missouri since November. In some states, lawmakers have even proposed reintroducing older execution methods, such as the firing squad and electrocution, so as to avoid the escalating legal battles over lethal injection.

In the end, the argument over what is the most “humane” way to kill someone only obscures the larger point, which is that, in the 21st century, the United States has no business putting people to death by any means. Public support for capital punishment has reached a 40-year low, and virtually all other Western societies have rejected it. It will end here, too, but not until this despicable practice is dragged out into the open for all to see.

Arizona death-row inmate found dead in apparent suicide

01.29.2014

An Arizona death-row inmate died Monday in an apparent suicide, state Department of Corrections officials said.

Gregory Dickens, 48, was pronounced dead after lifesaving measures failed, according to a news release.

Dickens was sentenced to death for his part in a double murder near Yuma in 1991. But, last week, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that, under a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, he was entitled to a new hearing in U.S. District Court to determine whether his first appeals attorney had been ineffective.

He was also the lead plaintiff in a 2009 federal lawsuit that challenged the state’s methods of carrying out executions by lethal injection.

(Source: AZCentral)

 

Ohio: Corrections officers placed on leave after Death Row inmate’s suicide

Two corrections officers on Death Row who were on duty when convicted killer Billy Slagle committed suicide early Sunday morning have been placed on administrative leave.

JoEllen Smith, spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said today that officers Clay Putnam, 19, and John McCollister, 30, were placed on administrative leave yesterday with pay, standard policy in suspension cases. No other information was released about the department’s investigation.

McCollister has been with the agency since 2010 and Putnam became a corrections officer in January this year.

Slagle, 44, was found hanging in his cell on Death Row at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution about 5 a.m. Sunday and died an hour later. Officers at the prison are supposed to make rounds of all cells every 30 minutes. His suicide came just hours before he was scheduled to go on around-the-clock watch beginning 72 hours prior to his execution.

He was scheduled to be lethally injected for the 1987 murder of 40-year-old Mari Anne Pope, his neighbor in Cleveland. (The Columbus Dispatch Thursday August 8, 2013)

When I Was on Death Row, I Saw a Bunch of Dead Men Walking. Solitary Confinement Killed Everything Inside Them.

By Anthony Graves, Death Row Exonoree #138

When I was on death row, I saw guys come to prison sane and leave this world insane, talking nonsense on the execution gurney.

I am death row exoneree #138.

There are 12 more people like me from Texas. Twelve people who spent years of their lives locked alone in concrete cages waiting to die before they were set free, exonerated for their innocence.

Eleven people have committed suicide on Texas’ death row. All because of the conditions.

When I was sentenced to death, I did not know that this sentence would also mean that I would have 12 years without any human contact, i.e. my mother, my son, my friends. All those people were stripped from my life because of this injustice. I did not know it would mean 12 years of having my meals slid through a small slot in a steel door like an animal. I did not know it would mean 12 years alone in a cage the size of a parking spot, sleeping on concrete steel bunk and alone for 22 to 24 hours a day. All for a crime I did not commit. The injustice.

For me and the 400 other prisoners on Texas’ death row while I was there, a death sentence meant a double punishment. We spent years locked alone in a tiny, concrete cage in solitary confinement, with guys going insane, dropping their appeals, doing everything they could to check out of this place before we were ever strapped to an execution gurney. All because of the conditions.

I am writing today because the ACLU has put out an important new paper about what it does to people to lock them alone in cages on death row. They found that over 93% of states lock away their death row prisoners for over 22 hours a day. Nearly a third of death row prisoners live in cages where their toilet is an arm’s length away from their bed. Sixty-percent of people on death row have no windows or natural light.

Solitary confinement is like living in a dark hole. People walk over the hole and you shout from the bottom, but nobody hears you. You start to play tricks with your mind just to survive. This is no way to live.

I saw the people living on death row fall apart. One guy suffered some of his last days smearing feces, lying naked in the recreation yard, and urinating on himself. I saw guys who dropped their appeals and elected to die because of the intolerable conditions. To sum it up, I saw a bunch of dead men walking because of the conditions that killed everything inside of them. And they were just waiting to lie down.

After I got out, I have tried to use my time to raise awareness about these conditions. I am currently working on a book and traveling the globe trying to share my message and educate people about the effects of solitary confinement. I have created AnthonyBelieves.com, which is my consulting firm that I use to help attorneys, nonprofit organizations, etc. I am asking for your support in my endeavors to bring attention to such inhumane issues by going to my website and ordering anything from my store to help offset my travel expenses. There’s also a petition on my webpage that I am asking 10 million people around the world to sign in solidarity with me as I stand up for justice.

Please help me and the ACLU get the word out about these conditions. Our death penalty system is broken in this country – it is applied unfairly against people. When you have a broken system, innocent people like me can end up on trial for their life. And subjecting anyone in prison to solitary confinement is torture. I am speaking on experience. Many of these same people are returning to our society, and when they do they come with all the baggage we put on them in the system. This keeps the rate of recidivism high.

In this country, we should be doing better than that. We should not have a criminal justice system turned into a criminal by the way we treat our citizens. Even when we do not like people or believe they have done something wrong, our emotions should not govern our society. We should be making laws from a rational perspective. We have to be above the criminal by keeping our system humane. Everyone should be treated like a human being. This is America.

Please share the new video I recorded for the ACLU to help get the word out about the double punishment of solitary confinement on death row. And make sure to read the ACLU’s new report. Also please check out AnthonyBelieves.com and give me your support while I cross the county and try to educate people about the inhumane treatment in our criminal justice system.

Thank you and best wishes.

For more on the double punishment of solitary confinement on death row, read the ACLU’s report A Death Before Dying.

Death row suicides more common than you’d think

CLEVELAND, Ohio — It seems hard to fathom, how locked away, under close watch, death row inmates can commit suicides.

Today convicted murderer Billy Slagle, who was scheduled to be executed in three days for killing a Cleveland woman in 1987, was found hanged in his cell this morning.

A spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said Slagle, 44, was found just after 5 a.m. and was pronounced dead about an hour later. The department is conducting a review of the apparent suicide and no further details are available, she said.

Across the country, at least three prisoners have killed themselves this year.

 
  • In April, San Quentin, Calif., death row inmate Justin Alan Helzer committed suicide by hanging himself in his cell, using a sheet attached to bars, according to CBS station KPIX. Helzer, 41, who was convicted of five murders in 2004, had tried to kill himself three years earlier by jabbing pens and pencils into his eye sockets. A prison official said Helzer had been watched intensively, but showed no signs that he was at risk of another suicide. 
  • In May, death row inmate Kenneth Justice killed himself at Lieber Correctional Institution in Ridgeville, SC, accordingo to The Post-Courier. Justus, 47, who received the death penalty for stabbing another inmate 11 times with a homemade shank, was discovered covered in blood, with a wound in the crease of his elbow and a razor blade in his hand.
Death row suicide isn’t unheard of in Ohio, either.
Three years ago, Lawrence Reynolds Jr. of Cuyahoga Falls overdosed on pills in an attempt to escape execution. Reynolds stockpiled about 30 pills, investigators said.
Reynolds, who strangled his neighbor in 1994, said he did not want to give the state the satisfaction of killing him. He was executed 10 days later.

TEXAS -SUZANNE MARGARET BASSO EXECUTION SET FEB. 5, 2014 EXECUTED 6.26 PM

HOUSTON (July 24, 2013)–State District Judge Mary Lou Keel has set a Feb. 5, 2014 execution date for Suzanne Basso, 59, who’s held on women’s death row in Gatesville.

Suzanne Basso (Texas prison photo)

In July of 1997, 59-year-old Louis “Buddy” Musso, the victim in this case, first met either [Basso] or her son, James “J.D.” 0′ Malley, at a church carnival in New Jersey.

Musso, though mentally retarded, lived independently, held a job at a local grocery store, and handled his own financial affairs. In June of 1998, Musso left New Jersey to live with [Basso] in Jacinto City, Texas. Shortly after Musso moved in with [Basso], Al Becker, Musso’s Social Security representative payee and friend of twenty years, began having difficulty contacting Musso. Becker had numerous telephone conversations with [Basso], but [Basso] eventually refused to allow him to communicate directly with Musso. Concerned about Musso’s welfare, Becker sought assistance from various state agencies, but was not able to gain any further information about Musso’s situation. In July of 1998, [Basso] unsuccessfully attempted to designate herself as Musso’s representative payee of his Social Security benefits. On an application for a life insurance policy on Musso, [Basso] was named beneficiary, and she had described herself as Musso’s “wife to be.”

After Musso’s death, police found certificates of insurance for policies in Musso’s name, including one that provided $65,000 in the event of Musso’s death from violent crimes. They also discovered a document entitled Musso’s “Last Will and Testament,” which purported to leave Musso’s entire estate to [Basso] while “no one else [was] to get a cent.” In the days leading up to his death, Musso suffered tremendous abuse at the hands of [Basso] and her five co-defendants. [Basso] would take Musso to the apartment of co- defendants Bernice Ahrens, Craig and Hope Ahrens (Bernice’s son and daughter), and Terence Singleton (Hope’s fiancé), where Musso was forced to remain seated or in a kneeling position on a plastic mat in the hallway for hours.

Whenever Musso attempted to get off the mat, O’Malley would beat or kick him. O’Malley, Singleton, Bernice, and Craig beat Musso, and O’Malley, while wearing combat boots, kicked him repeatedly. [Basso] beat Musso with a baseball bat on the buttocks, back, and groin area, and both she and Hope struck him with a belt and buckle. After hearing that Musso had been “misbehaving” while she was away from the apartment, [Basso], who weighed over 300 pounds, repeatedly jumped on top of Musso while he was on his hands and knees, causing him to fall flat on the ground.

At one point, Musso requested that someone there call an ambulance. Even though Hope, as she later admitted,recognized the extent of Musso’s injuries, he received no medical attention. Someone (the evidence suggests either O’Malley or Singleton and Craig) bathed Musso in a solution of bleach and Pine- Sol cleaning fluid, using a wire brush on his body.

Apparently, his killers were giving Musso this kind of “bath” when he died.

On the morning of August 28, 1999, Musso’s body was found dumped near a roadway in Galena Park. Because Musso’s clothes lacked any blood stains, and his only shoe was on the wrong foot, investigators believed that his body had been dressed after he died.

The medical examiner reported an extraordinary number of injuries to Musso’s body and was unable to count the “hundreds” of bruises that covered Musso from head to toe.

The palms of Musso’s hands and the soles of his feet were bruised, while his back and buttocks showed numerous lash marks indicative of his having been whipped. Musso’s severely blackened eyes resulted from a “hinge fracture” to his skull, which probably was caused by a blow to the back of the head. He had sustained broken bones in his nose, ribs, and throat. Marks on his back appeared to be cigarette burns, but may have been caused by a hot poker, and the medical examiner noted areas of skin abrasion possibly attributable to contact with a cleaning solution or scrub brush.

The cause of death was believed to have been a skull fracture from an unknown object, which left a large, X-shaped laceration in Musso’s scalp. On the evening before Musso’s body was discovered, [Basso] began what evolved into a lengthy attempt to establish that Musso had run away.

She made several phone calls to people, including Becker, a niece of Musso’s, and the local police, expressing concern about Musso’s whereabouts. [Basso] claimed that Musso probably had run away with a “little Mexican lady” that he had met at a laundromat and said that she was “getting kind of worried” about him. In a written statement to police, [Basso] later confessed to having driven Bernice Ahrens’s car, with Musso’s body in the trunk, to the site where O’Malley, Singleton, and Craig Ahrens dumped the body. She also admitted driving the car to the dumpster where the others disposed of additional incriminating evidence, including bloody clothes and rubber gloves, which the police had found as a result of O’Malley’s confession.

UPDATE CLICK HERE

Man Formerly on SC’s Death Row Suing Prosecutors

COLUMBIA, S.C.  – A man condemned for decades to South Carolina’s death row says prosecutors wrongfully pursued a case against him in a widow’s 1982 death.

Edward Lee Elmore filed a federal lawsuit last month accusing prosecutors of planting evidence that implicated him and conspiring to convict him.

Elmore was sentenced to death in the slaying of a 75-year-old widow for whom he had done odd jobs.

That verdict was overturned on appeal three times. Elmore left death row in 2010 when his attorneys argued he was mentally disabled and had a low IQ.

In 2012, he left prison altogether after entering an Alford plea to murder. Prosecutors agreed his punishment should be the 11,000 days Elmore spent incarcerated.

Court papers listed no attorneys for the prosecutors and officers named in Elmore’s lawsuit.

(The Associated Press)

Florida: Execution of Marshal Lee Gore halted again

For the second time in less than three weeks, a court has stayed the execution of Miami killer Marshall Lee Gore, who was set to die by lethal injection Wednesday.

Gore was convicted and set to Death Row for the 1988 slaying of Lauderhill’s Robyn Novick, whose body was found stabbed and beaten in a trash heap near Homestead.

On Tuesday, a Bradford County circuit judge agreed with Gore’s defense lawyers and found “reasonable grounds” that the Death Row inmate was too insane to be executed. Circuit Judge Ysleta McDonald ordered more hearings.

The U.S. Supreme Court has said that executing insane inmates is cruel and unusual punishment.

Gov. Rick Scott originally scheduled Gore to be executed on June 24 at the Florida State Prison in Starke. However, one hour before the execution, the Atlanta-based U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeal stayed the execution, giving Gore a chance to flesh out the issue. Three days later, the court lifted the stay, saying Gore had not met the criteria for delaying the execution. (Source: Miami Herald)