November 17, 2012
Dates are subject to change due to stays and appeals
| December | |||||
| 12.04.12 | George Ochoa | Oklahoma | executed | ||
| 12.11.2012 | Roy Ward | Indiana | Stay likely | ||
| 12.11.2012 | Manuel Pardo | Florida | executed | ||
| 12.12.2012 | Rigoberto Avila | Texas | Changed to 4/10/2013 | ||
November 14, 2012 http://www.lasvegassun.com
ARSON CITY — The Nevada Supreme Court, in a 5-2 decision, has upheld the murder conviction and death penalty sentence for Thomas Richardson in the hammer slaying and robbery of two people in Las Vegas.
Richardson and Robert Dehnart agreed in September 2005 to rob and murder Steve Folker, who was at the home of Estelle Feldman, also killed with hammer blows to the head, records show.
Dehnart, who was the 18-year old son of Richardson’s girlfriend, agreed to testify against Richardson as part of a plea deal. He was sentenced to 20 to 50 years for first-degree murder and a consecutive 4 to 30 year term for robbery.
Chief Justice Michael Cherry dissented in the ruling, saying evidence against Richardson “was not overwhelming” and errors at trial required the conviction be overturned and a new trial ordered. Justice Nancy Saitta agreed with Cherry.
Richardson maintained he was in California at the time of the murders.
But the court’s majority opinion said the trial testimony of Dehnart “is sufficiently corroborated,” and substantial evidence supports the jury verdict.
The court said District Court Judge Michelle Leavitt was wrong in not permitting the defense in closing arguments to maintain Dehnart was lying to receive a lighter sentence.
But the court called it harmless error.
Cherry, in his dissent, said defense attorneys should have been allowed to argue that Richardson had returned to California before the time of the murder.
“As there was conflicting evidence of this crucial fact and no physical evidence placing Richardson in the home or even in the state at the time of the murders, (defense) counsel’s argument became much more vital to the defense,” Cherry wrote.
Cherry also wrote that evidence at the crime scene was mishandled, and a replica of the hammer used in the killing should not have been introduced at the trial.
November 12,2012 http://www.dw.de
Larry Swearingen faces imminent execution in Texas for a crime that forensic scientists say he could not have committed. His time is running out.
In his 12 years on death row, Larry Swearingen’s execution date has been set three times. Three times he has known when he will be strapped to a stretcher and put down with drugs: sodium thiobarbital to anesthetize him, pancurium bromide to paralyze his muscles and potassium chloride to stop his heart.
In January 2009, he had written his goodbyes and was on his way to the chamber when the stay of execution came through. “The way I had to look at it was ‘I’m just gonna lay down and go to sleep,'” he said. “I wasn’t gonna grovel. I wasn’t gonna sit there and cry. I can’t be remorseful for a crime I didn’t commit.”
Swearingen lives at the Allan B. Polunsky unit, an hour or so north of Houston, together with around 300 men and women awaiting execution for capital crimes committed in Texas. He is kept in solitary confinement 24 hours a day, in a cell not quite four meters long (13 feet) and a little over two meters wide, with a slit above head height, more a vent than a window.
Swearingen is strikingly calm, his voice rarely rising, even as he complains about the injustice of being locked up for a murder that forensic science shows he cannot have committed. “It’s not easy being here,” he says. “There are men who are hanging themselves, men who are cutting themselves, men sitting in their own feces, men slowly losing their minds. If people think it’s easy they are sadly mistaken.”
supporters of the death penalty argue that the USA’s appeals system is so thorough that no innocent person has ever been executed.
In recent years, that faith has been shaken by a number of high-profile cases. Todd Willingham was executed in Texas for setting the house fire that killed his two young daughters, despite several of the country’s most prominent arson investigators testifying that the blaze almost certainly started by accident. Troy Davis went to the chamber in Georgia for shooting a policeman, despite a lack of DNA evidence and seven out of the nine prosecution witnesses later changing their stories.
Swearingen’s case is different, in that forensic science provides him with an alibi: He cannot have raped and murdered his supposed victim, because he was already in prison when she was killed.
Open-and-shut case?
Melissa Trotter disappeared on December 8, 1998. Swearingen was one of the last people to see her alive, at Montgomery College. Three days later police picked him up on outstanding arrest warrants for minor offences, put him in jail and began to build a case against him.
Trotter’s body was discovered on January 2, 1999, in the Sam Houston National Forest, by hunters looking for a lost gun. At first glance, they thought it was a mannequin, dumped in the woods. She was wearing jeans, but her torso was naked. She had been strangled with one leg of a pair of tights. A search team, with cadaver dogs, had passed within 20 meters of the spot a fortnight earlier and found nothing.
At the autopsy, with the district attorney and two of his sheriffs in the room, Harris County’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Joye Carter, estimated that she had been dead for around 25 days, which meant she had been killed the day she went missing.
When Carter repeated this at the trial, the defense team let it pass unchallenged. Jurors heard that Swearingen had a history of violence towards women, that he had repeatedly lied to police, that hairs forcibly removed from Trotter’s head were recovered from his truck and that the other leg of the pair of tights used to kill her was found in his house.
They were not told that the tights appeared during a fourth police visit to the property, after three prior searches had turned up nothing. The DNA under Trotter’s fingernails, belonging to somebody other than Swearingen, was dismissed as a contaminant – perhaps a drop of blood from a cut in a forensic technician’s hand.
The jury took less than two hours to find Swearingen guilty.
Science vs. the courts
Dr. Stephen Pustilnik, chief medical examiner for nearby Galveston County, says the autopsy results aren’t credible. Although there were signs of decomposition around Trotter’s head, her corpse was in remarkably good condition.
“For many days, where she was found, it was 72 degrees Fahrenheit [22 degrees Celsius],” he said. “If you’re at that temperature for three days, you’re green, bloated and stinky. Her internal organs look beautiful.”
At the morgue, her heart, liver, lungs and spleen were remarkably intact.
Pustilnik said the body could not have been dead for 25 days. Several other forensic scientists called by the defense team have come to the same conclusion. It means that Swearingen could not have killed Trotter, because he was already in jail when she died.
Final hearing
I returned to Montgomery County for Swearingen’s final evidentiary hearing. The case has been going back and forth between Judge Fred Edwards and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) for years: Each time, Edwards has upheld Swearingen’s conviction and each time the appeals court has granted the defense one more hearing. This was categorically his last.
Swearingen sat with his defense team, feet shackled together, wearing a striped Montgomery County Jail jumpsuit. In the pews on the right, behind the district attorney’s table, Sandy and Charlie Trotter were surrounded by supporters holding pictures of Melissa. They are convinced Swearingen is guilty and need him to be gone, so they can grieve in peace. Sandy handed me a photograph of her daughter, but was too upset to talk.
The benches on the left were empty, apart from a couple of local newspaper reporters and a frail-looking woman taking notes. Pam Martinez, Swearingen’s mother, attended every day of the hearing, even though she had recently had heart surgery for the second time.
“My cardiologist tells me that I need to cut the stress out,” she said. “I would like to cut the stress, but I support my son. He’s my child and I want to protect him.”
‘Innocence doesn’t matter’
This time, too, Judge Edward upheld the conviction. Now the case goes back to the TCCA. If the panel again upholds Swearingen’s conviction, he will have run out of options. His “actual innocence” petition to the Supreme Court has been denied. Any further appeals will be summarily rejected. A new execution date will be set and, barring an unprecedented last-minute pardon, he will be taken to the execution chamber at Huntsville and put down.Swearingen knows his chances are slim. “Under federal law in the United States being innocent does not matter,” he said. “If being innocent makes no difference, this country is no better than Iran or Syria, these third-world countries that kill their own citizens. How can being innocent not matter?”
The TCCA’s ruling is expected in the coming months.
MOst books built around convictions of innocent defendants end with exoneration. In “The Injustice System,” the alleged innocent is still locked in a prison cell and might never emerge. Any well researched book about a suspected wrongful conviction is by definition shot through with dramatic tension; after all, if the wrong person is serving prison time, the actual murderer or rapist or robber might be at large, continuing to commit horrific crimes. The tension within the pages of “The Injustice System” is relentless.
Author Clive Stafford Smith is a former Atlanta lawyer (now based alternately in New Orleans and his native England) who earned a law degree in the United States so he could work on putting an end to the death penalty in the long run and save individual inmates from execution in the short run.
Driven more by principle than a won-loss record in court or a hefty salary, Stafford Smith is an unconventional professional who dives into high-stakes cases. His previous book, “Eight O’Clock Ferry to the Windward Side,” chronicles his experience representing prisoners at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, where alleged terrorists are detained without the usual safeguards that protect individuals from wrongful incarceration.
When he first met Krishna “Kris” Maharaj, the primary subject of “The Injustice System,” Stafford Smith was affiliated with the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta and representing prisoners in capital cases. At the request of British diplomatic officials, he took on Maharaj’s case.
Police arrested Maharaj, a Trinidad businessman of Indian heritage, in 1986 for allegedly murdering former business partner Derrick Moo Young and the partner’s son, Duane. The double murder occurred inside the DuPont Plaza hotel in downtown Miami. Maharaj proclaimed his innocence and said he could prove it if given the opportunity. But police, prosecutors and jurors did not believe him. Sentenced to death, Maharaj was jailed in Florida State Prison. Maharaj hoped to find competent legal representation to handle a final appeal, most of his appellate routes already having been exhausted before Stafford Smith learned about the case.
Based on his own investigation, Stafford Smith alleges evidence was cooked by an overzealous homicide detective; prosecutors bent the principles of justice they are sworn to uphold; forensic examiners provided biased readings of evidence; witnesses committed perjury; a trial judge was less than devoted to evenhandedness; and appellate justices dismissed powerful new evidence suggesting Maharaj’s innocence.
Most upsetting of all to an avid defense lawyer such as Stafford Smith, he claims the defense lawyer hired by Maharaj for the trial was grossly incompetent. In truth, Stafford Smith worried the defense lawyer lost the trial intentionally because of threats aimed at his family by South American drug dealers, whom Stafford Smith suspected was involved in the murders.
As in so many alleged wrongful conviction cases — and in so many documented exonerations — it is puzzling to calculate how a dozen jurors all failed to find “reasonable doubt.” Stafford Smith wants to believe he can find a way to prove Maharaj’s innocence. The reality is, however, that Stafford Smith will likely go to his own death without winning freedom for his client. That knowledge is especially painful to Stafford Smith, because he believes his independent investigation has identified the actual killer of Moo Young and his son.
November 8, 2012 http://www.wired.com
Supreme Court justices are to meet privately Friday to weigh whether it will hear a major genetic privacy case testing whether authorities may take DNA samples from anybody arrested for a serious crime.
The case has wide-ranging implications, as at least 21 states and the federal government have regulations requiring suspects to give a DNA sample upon arrest. In all the states with such laws, DNA saliva samples are catalogued in state and federal crime-fighting databases.
The issue confronts the government’s interest in solving crime, balanced against the constitutional rights of those arrested to be free from government intrusion.
The case before the justices concerns a decision in April of Maryland’s top court, which said it was a breach of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable search and seizure to take DNA samples from suspects who have not been convicted.
The Maryland Court of Appeals, that state’s highest court, said that arrestees have a “weighty and reasonable expectation of privacy against warrantless, suspicionless searches” and that expectation is not outweighed by the state’s “purported interest in assuring proper identification” of a suspect.
Maryland prosecutors argued that the mouth swab was no more intrusive than fingerprinting, (.pdf) but the state’s high court said that it “could not turn a blind eye” to what it called a “vast genetic treasure map” (.pdf) that exists in the DNA samples retained by the state.
The court was noting that DNA sampling is much different from compulsory fingerprinting. A fingerprint, for example, reveals nothing more than a person’s identity. But much more can be learned from a DNA sample, which codes a person’s family ties, some health risks and, according to some, can predict apropensity for violence.
In the justices’ Friday conference, they are likely to agree to review the Maryland case, and announce their decision days later. That’s because Chief Justice John Roberts has stayed the Maryland decision pending whether the justices review the case. In the process, he said there was a “fair prospect” (.pdf) the Supreme Court would reverse the decision. If the justices decline the case, the Maryland decision becomes law.
The National District Attorneys Association is urging the Supreme Court to overturn the Maryland decision, saying DNA sampling “serves an important public and governmental interest.” (.pdf)
The group points to the Maryland case at hand, concerning defendant Alonzo King. After being arrested in 2009 on assault charges, a DNA sample he provided linked him to an unsolved 2003 rape conviction. He was later convicted of the sex crime, but the Maryland Court of Appeals reversed, saying his Fourth Amendment rights were breached.
The issue before the justices does not contest the long-held practice of taking DNA samples from convicts. The courts have already upheld DNA sampling of convicted felons, based on the theory that those who are convicted of crimes have fewer privacy rights.
Still, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that when conducting intrusions of the body during an investigation, the police need so-called “exigent circumstances” or a warrant. For example, the fact that alcohol evaporates in the body is an exigent circumstance that provides authorities with the right to draw blood from a suspected drunk driver without a warrant.
Maryland’s law, requiring DNA samples for those arrested for burglary and crimes of violence, is not nearly as harsh as California’s. The Golden State’s statute is among the nation’s strictest, requiring samples for any felony arrest.
A three-judge federal appeals panel has upheld California’s law, although the court is reviewing the issue again with 11 judges.
DNA testing in the United States was first used to convict a suspected Florida rapist in 1987, and has been a routine tool to solve old or so-called cold cases. It has also exonerated convicts and those on death row.
Prison authorities in South Dakota are refusing to release information on contaminated drugs made to order for an execution tonight (30 October).
The so-called ‘DIY drugs’ – doses of the barbiturate pentobarbital produced by a compounding pharmacy for the South Dakota Department of Corrections (DOC) – were used to execute Eric Robert earlier this month, with alarming results. Robert’s eyes opened during the lethal injection process, a sign that he may not have been properly anaesthetised and the execution may have been botched.
The ingredients used to make the drugs used in Eric Robert’s execution – and set to be used this evening in that of Donald Moeller – were found to have been contaminated with fungus.
However, despite these indications that the drugs may be faulty, and therefore carrying a risk of unnecessary suffering for the prisoner, South Dakota has thus far refused to disclose any information on how they were obtained.
The drugs are known to have been made by a compounding pharmacy – a service which allows batches of drugs to be made up to order, thereby allowing customers to bypass mainstream pharmaceutical suppliers which face more comprehensive regulation. The compounding pharmacy industry has been in the spotlight lately after reports linked it to a widespread outbreak of meningitis in the US.
South Dakota DOC had previously intended to use drugs they had illegally imported from a supplier in India in the executions, but these drugs expired last month.
Maya Foa, investigator for the legal charity Reprieve said: “The use of these DIY execution drugs means that we have little idea of just what is being injected into prisoners’ veins. It is no surprise that prison authorities appear so desperate to cover up any information on where they have come from, or who made them. The South Dakota Department of Corrections must come clean: it is indefensible for the ultimate punishment to be carried out in this slipshod and unaccountable manner.”
October 19 2012 http://newsone.com/
George Junius Stinney Jr., the 14-year-old Black boy who died as the youngest person ever executed in the United States in the 20th century, would have been 83-years-old this Sunday.
Instead, his birthday will serve as a haunting reminder of why the death penalty needs to be abolished.
When two White girls, 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 8-year-old Mary Emma Thames, went missing in Alcolu, S.C., on March 22, 1944, after riding in to town on their bicycles, Stinney was arrested the following day for allegedly murdering them.
The girls had allegedly passed Stinney’s home, where they asked him where they could find a particular kind of flower. Once the girls did not return home, hundreds of volunteers looked for them until their bodies were found the next morning in a ditch.
Because Stinney joined the search team and shared with another volunteer that he had spoken to the girls before they disappeared, he was arrested for their murders.
Without his parents, Stinney was interrogated by several White officers for hours. A deputy eventually emerged announcing that Stinney had confessed to the girls’ murders. The young boy allegedly told the deputies that he wanted to have sex with the 11-year-old girl, but had to kill the younger one to do it. When the 8-year-old supposedly refused to leave, he allegedly killed both of them because they refused his sexual advances.
To coerce his confession, deputies reportedly offered the child an ice cream cone.
There is no record of a confession. No physical evidence that he committed the crime exists. His trial — if you want to call it that — lasted less than two hours. No witnesses were called. No defense evidence was presented. And the all-White jury deliberated for all of 10 minutes before sentencing him to death.
On June 16, 1944, his frail, 5-foot-1, 95-pound body was strapped in to an electric chair at a state correctional facility in Columbia, S.C. Dictionaries had to be stacked on the seat of the chair so that he could properly sit in the seat. But even that didn’t help. When the first jolts of electricity hit him, the head mask reportedly slipped off, revealing the agony on his face and the tears streaming down his cheeks. Only after several more jolts of electricity did the boy die.
It was, without question, one of the greatest miscarriages of justice in U.S. history. Yet, decades later,33 states in the United States still practice this barbaric form of so-called justice. And the way it has been applied to our community has been especially unjust — and discriminatory.
Since 1973, almost 30 years after Stinney’s execution, 141 people in 26 states have been exoneratedfrom death row after new evidence cleared them of wrongdoing, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Seventy of those individuals were Black men and one was a Black woman, which accounts for more than half of the wrongfully convicted. Twelve of them were Latino.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, says that race and other unjust factors determine who is sentenced to death.
“It’s those who are the most vulnerable,” Dieter told NewsOne in a phone interview. “If you have a poor lawyer or if you kill a White person, you’re more likely to get the death penalty. If you kill someone in Texas, it’s different than if you are accused of killing someone in another state and that is terribly unfair.”
What is even more unfair is that, since 1977, the majority of death row defendants have been executed for killing White victims, according to Amnesty International. But more than half of all homicide victims are African American. A Yale University Law School study reports that Black defendants are sentenced to death at three times the rate of White defendants when the victim is White.
Things really have not changed since little George Stinney was executed for killing two White girls based on virtually no evidence and pure racism.
Diann Rust-Tierney, executive director of the National Coalition To Abolish The Death Penalty, told NewsOne in an interview that Stinney’s upcoming birthday should remind us all that a flawed method of administering justice for the victim is not just if it clearly targets a particular group of people.
“If we don’t care whether or not race is influencing these cases, how are we going to make the system care if it turns out that our children are not getting the education they need or we’re not getting a fair shake in mortgages?” Rust-Tierney asked. “That is what this is about.”
Her Washington, D.C.-based organization played a pivotal role in helping to abolish the death penalty for juveniles in the United States with its 1997 “Stop Killing Kids Campaign” that lead to South Dakota and Wyoming banning the practice for offenders under the age of 18. The U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the practice against juveniles in 2005.
Before the High Court’s ruling, however, 71 juveniles were on death row. Two-thirds of them where offenders of color, and more than two-thirds of their victims were white.
“For people of color, the criminal justice system has been designed to be about us and around us but never with us,” Rust-Tierney said.
It certainly wasn’t with Stinney when his court-appointed attorney didn’t even care to call witnesses or provide evidence in his defense. And the justice system certainly wasn’t with his parents when a lynch mob ran them out of town, leaving their son in that South Carolina courtroom to face his fate all by himself.
I believe the best way we can commemorate the birth of this poor 14-year-old boy’s short life is to take a moment to really ask ourselves why we need this cruel form of punishment to begin with. Some will argue that if you kill someone, you should be put to death.
Well, the vast majority of convicts who are found guilty of killing someone are not sentenced to death. So why the selective application?
Is it making our streets safer?
No.
Has it put innocent lives on death row for crimes they did not commit?
Yes.
Of the 33 states in the Union that administer the death penalty, California voters will have the choice on Nov. 6 to vote for or against Proposition 34.
Not only would it end the death penalty in California, it would save the state more than $130 million per year in costs from death penalty cases. The measure would also require convicted killers to work and pay restitution in to a victim’s compensation fund.
Greg Akili, the Southern California field director for Safe California, told NewsOne that as much as $100 million of the money saved from executions can potentially go to a crime victim’s fund to help support their cases.
“That is a better use of the money because many of the victims that we work with and who have been supporting the initiative are victims of rape and murder but their cases are not being aggressively pursued,” Akili said. “So the money that we save from executing people here in California can be used for that fund.”
Proposition 34 is a smart, cost-effective way of administering justice that can truly help make our street’s safer and ensure that no innocent person is killed for a crime they did not commit.
We do not know what Stinney would have done with his 83 years had he lived that long. But what we do know is that the ugly, inhumane practice that took his life nearly seventy years ago is as flawed and broken now as it was back in 1944.
Currently, more than half of the 3,170 of the people on death row are people of color,according to the Equal Justice Initiative. Forty-three percent of them are African-American.
In Alabama, for example, 80 percent of all death sentences are imposed in cases where the victim is White even though 65 percent of the state’s murder victims are Black.
The racial bias that forced a 14-year-old Stinney in to an electric chair some 68 years ago clearly exists today.
So when we sit in our church pews this Sunday morning, lead our congregations in prayer, and deliver the good word, let us not forget that little George Stinney was born.
Let us take a moment of silence to reflect on the fact that the United States – along with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and China — tops the list of countries with the highest execution rates in the world. We are not serving justice nor are we serving any God by using the death penalty to take another human being’s life. We’re merely serving our primal desire to get even.
But as little George Stinney should remind us, there was nothing even about the way it was applied to him or others since his execution.
It’s time to end the death penalty in America. Now and forever.
Dates are subject to change due to stays and appeals
Pennsylvania execution dates and stays are generally not listed because the state routinely sets execution dates before all appeals have been exhausted.
NOVEMBER 16 , 2012
| November | ||||
| 11.06.12 | Garry Allen | Oklahoma | EXECUTED | 6.10 p.m |
| 11.08.12 | Mario Swain | Texas | EXECUTED | 6.39 p.m |
| 11/08.2012 | Hubert Michael | Pennsylvania | STAY | |
| 11/13/2012 | Brett Hartman | Ohio | EXECUTED | 10.34 a.m |
| 11/14/2012 | Ramon Hernandez | Texas | EXECUTED | 6.38 p.m |
| 11/15/2012 | Preston hughes | Texas | EXECUTED | 7.52 p.m |
octobre 18,2012 http://www.sltrib.com
A Utah lawmaker wants to make it possible for inmates to do a final good act if they happen to die while serving time.
Rep. Steve Eliason, R-Sandy, is again proposing a bill that would allow inmates to voluntarily agree to posthumously donate their organs. In the 2012 session, his bill passed the House but time ran out before it could be considered by the Utah Senate. The criminal justice interim committee approved the inmate medical donation act on Wednesday.
“In some respects, it’s a way for someone who is trying to pay their dues to society to get one last shot on their way out,” he said in an interview.
Over the past four years, an average of 15 inmates have died each year while incarcerated, according to the Utah Department of Corrections. The department began including organ-donor consent forms in the paperwork given to inmates during orientation at the end of 2011 after speaking with Eliason about his proposal.
“They liked the idea so much they implemented it anyway even though it did not become law,” Eliason said.
Mike Haddon, Corrections deputy director, told the interim committee that inmates are being given donor forms as they go through medical and dental screenings upon arrival at the prison. He said that in the past, organ donation “was a consideration” for some inmates as they passed away.
But Eliason still wants it enshrined in statute so the policy isn’t subject to the whims of changing administrations. He said he also plans to include jails in this year’s draft legislation.
Laws governing organ donation by either living or deceased prison inmates — a population that numbers about 2 million — vary from state to state. Federal law prohibits compensating donors for organs, and that bars prisoners, like others, from benefiting in any way.
Nationwide, there are 116,000 people on the waiting list for organs; about 80 percent are waiting for a kidney, according to data from the United Network for Organ Sharing. There have been about 16,586 transplants so far this year, most using organs from deceased donors. In Utah, 705 people are on waiting lists for organs, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.
A single healthy donor can provide up to 24 different organs and tissues — from kidneys to skin to corneas — that can help others, Eliason said.
…………………………………………………………….
By doing some research on the states that allow organ donation, I discovered a website called G.A.V.E (prisoner organ donation) from willing Inmates. http://www.gavelife.org/
G.A.V.E. is an organization set up to make a difference in the organ shortage in the U.S. with the help of willing and healthy volunteer prisoners. Prisoners frequently ask to help through living kidney donations or multiple donations after execution to anyone in need. However, they are just as frequently denied unnecessarily by prison administration and transplant authorities.
There are typically only between 10,000-15,000 donations given annually which provide organs for a small fraction of the greater than 112,000 Americans on waiting lists. Yet inmates make up nearly 2,000,000 potential donors. If just 1% chose to participate and were allowed to do so, this would nearly double the number of current organ donations in the U.S. While this won’t solve the problem, it will have a dramatic impact.
This site explores why donations from willing prisoners are not occurring now and advocates for a change to allow healthy and willing inmates the opportunity to save lives.
If the interested visitor finds the content and ideas of this site intriguing, meritorious, or worthy of debate, G.A.V.E. welcomes your input. Of course, G.A.V.E. is looking for your support, but the quickest way to kindle a fire is to rub two opposing opinions together.
OCTOBER 9, 2012 http://www.theweek.co.uk/
THE REPUBLICAN Party in Arkansas has withdrawn its financial support from three state legislature candidates who have variously advocated the death penalty for children and called for the deportation of all Muslims from America, described slavery as a “blessing in disguise” for Africans and labeled Abraham Lincoln a “war criminal”.
Candidate Charlie Fuqua and two sitting representatives, Jon Hubbard and Loy Mauch, have been cut off because of their radical beliefs, many of which have been branded as offensive by their own party.
In a book, God’s Law: The Only Political Solution, Fuqua claims there was “no solution to the Muslim problem short of expelling all followers of the religion from the United States”.
And, as the Arkansas Times reports, that is not the only eye-catching policy in God’s Law. He also advocates execution for children, arguing: “A child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society.” However, he is aware of the severity of the punishment and stresses: “The death penalty for rebellious children is not something to be taken lightly.”
Fuqua also suggests setting the minimum wage at zero and argues that people should only serve two years in prison. If they are not rehabilitated within that time, they should be executed, he says
Fuqua has lost his funding, but Arkansas Times blogger Max Bentley notes: “No party official has demanded money back or urged Fuqua to withdraw from the race. Majority control of the legislature is far too important for Republicans to abandon a candidate, no matter how extreme. Which tells you a little something about Republican majority governance.”
The Guardian’s George Monbiot is just one of those who has expressed shock at Fuqua’s remarks on Twitter, writing: “Ye gods! Republican candidate calls for death penalty for children who disrespect their parents.”
But Fuqua’s views are not the only ones drawing ire. Jon Hubbard, who has been a member of the Arkansas House of Representatives since 2010, has also caused outrage. In 2009 he self-published a book, Letters to the Editor: Confessions of a Frustrated Conservative, which argued that slavery was a “blessing in disguise”. “Would an existence spent in slavery have been any crueler than a life spent in sub-Saharan Africa?” he pondered.
He also noted that despite the deaths of millions during centuries of slavery, there was a silver lining. “The blacks who could endure those conditions and circumstances would someday be rewarded with citizenship in the greatest nation ever established upon the face of the Earth”.
The third candidate to cause upset is Loy Mauch, who has also held his seat since 2010. Local radio station Kait8 reported: “Mauch called Abraham Lincoln a war criminal and defended slavery in dozens of letters to a Little Rock newspaper.” In 2007 he described Lincoln as a “neurotic Northern war criminal” in a letter to the Little Rock Democrat-Gazette and in 2009 asked: “If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it”? ·
Claim your Innocence 