United States

DEATH ROW: Journalist and campaigner Eric Allison gives his inside track

May 31, 2012 Source : http://www.camdennewjournal.com

by Eric Allison

During my time behind bars, I acquired something of a reputation as a jailhouse lawyer.

Not major league; I didn’t reverse any wrongful convictions, or take a case to the House of Lords, as some of my more illustrious fellow con lawyers managed; but I enjoyed some minor victories and liked being a thorn in the side of my keepers and fighting them on behalf of prisoners with a grievance occupied my time nicely.

My work – all pro bono – did not endear me to the authorities who held me; no penal system takes kindly to criticism from those it locks up.

But my experience and the payback from my keepers, pales into insignificance alongside the real jailhouse lawyers brought to life  in the pages of a remarkable book of that name.

Jailhouse Lawyers is the work of one of the most celebrated prisoners in the American prison system, Mumia Abu Jamal, who has been on death row in a Pennsylvania penitentiary since he was convicted of murdering a police officer in Philadelphia in 1981.

Jamal, 54, is perhaps the best known prisoner in the world; feted by lawyers and academics and supported by activists worldwide.

He has been given honorary citizenship of 25 cities, including Paris, Copenhagen and Montreal.

Although no mean lawyer himself, the book is not about the author.

He takes an admirably humble view of his own achievements, preferring to pay homage to the celebrated convict lawyers who have taken cases to the highest courts in the US. Practitioners who, in Jamal’s words, have learned their law, “not in the ivory towers of multi-billion-dollar-endowed universities”, but in the “hidden dark dungeons of America.”

The term dungeons is not misused; in the US, prisoners who offend their keepers are placed in the “hole” and the common thread linking those featured in the book is the amount of time they have all spent in the hole, some for decades.

And while some penal systems “dress up” the names used for isolation blocks (care and separation units, in this country for example), in the US, the hole is precisely that – a hole in the ground. Hardly the places to prepare to take groundbreaking cases to the United States Supreme Court, as many of those named have done.

In 1991, a group of academics studied the disciplinary actions, against prisoners, in jails across the US.

They found no segment of the american prison population outweighed jailhouse lawyers when it came to prisoners targeted by the administrators for punishment.

The prison lawyers headed the table, “scoring” twice as many spells in the hole as, for example, gang members or political prisoners.

Despite this persecution, many have become legends in their own legal time; often teaching other inmates to follow what has become a successful tradition.

The fact that jailhouse lawyers have become so firmly entrenched in US legal circles is a massive tribute to those practising their craft under the most restrictive and oppressive conditions.

Men such as Richard Mayberry, who has won more civil actions from behind bars than most conventional lawyers win in a lifetime.

In legal circles in the US, it is said to be a rare law report which does not begin or end with Mayberry mentioned in the citation or text.

Or David Ruiz, who, in 1971, naively complained about prison conditions to the assistant warden of the Texas penitentiary which held him. That action earned a long spell in the hole.

Learning fast, Ruiz rewrote his complaints and passed them out to a lawyer and began the battle which would change Texas penal history. A decade later, the United States Supreme Court forced the Texas penal authorities to spend billions to bring their system into “some semblance of modernity”.

The fight for justice from inside has never been easy. Even in supposedly enlightened times, attempts have been made to silence the jailhouse lawyers.

In 1996 the then President Bill Clinton put his name to the Prison Litigation Reform Act which, far from reforming, put financial and legal restraints on those who sued from behind bars.

The author’s death sentence is currently under review. In April this year, the United States Court of Appeals unanimously declared his death sentence to be unconstitutional.

His case was remanded for a new hearing.

The death penalty  may be imposed again or Abu-Jamal may receive a sentence of life without parole.

Irrespective of his fate, this compelling and inspiring work should be mandatory reading by those who make and practice law.

Reform rarely comes from the top, the poker player holding four aces never asks for a new deal.

Jailhouse lawyers worldwide have usually been dealt a bad hand in life; these chronicles show us that, even with the odds stacked against them, they do not always lose the game.

• Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners v the USA. By Mumia Abu-Jamal, Crossroads Books, PO Box 287 NW6 5QU £11.99 + 10% postage. Email: crossroadsbooks@ allwomencount.net

• Selma James presents her new book, Sex, Race and Class – The Perspective of Winning, at the Owl Bookshop  207-209 Kentish Town Road, NW5 2JU  at 6.30pm tonight (Thursday)

TEXAS – Decision adds to scrutiny of death penalty cases – Anthony Bartee

May 26, 2012 Source : http://www.mysanantonio.com

At 3:25 a.m. on May 2, Anthony Bartee was eating breakfast, not knowing if it would be his last.

That evening, Bartee, 55, was to be strapped to the gurney in the death chamber in Huntsville for the 1996 robbery and slaying of his friend David Cook, 37.

Bartee’s attorney David Dow started his day scrambling to get his client a second stay — the first was granted within a week of Bartee’s original Feb. 28 execution date. In addition to the usual appellate route, Dow took an atypical one.

He filed a federal lawsuit against the Bexar County district attorney’s office, claiming that Bartee’s civil rights were violated by prosecutors withholding evidence for DNA testing that could prove his client’s innocence.

The DA’s office doubted the attempt would work because Bartee had 15 years to make evidence claims. And besides, he wasn’t convicted based on DNA. But with Bartee’s death imminent, Chief U.S. District Judge Fred Biery granted the temporary stay to allow more time to examine Dow’s civil rights claims.

The ruling was rare, experts said, and speaks to an ever-increasing scrutiny of death penalty cases as exonerations from post-conviction DNA testing continue to mount.

“The courts are more cautious, and most people think they should be if there is a question about it,” said Cornell University Law School Professor John H. Blume.

Juries, too, are handing down fewer death sentences, nationwide and locally.

Local prosecutors have noted the trend and are taking a harder look at whether to seek death.

“We don’t go get the death penalty just because we can,” First Assistant District Attorney Cliff Herberg said. “It’s a very serious decision-making process.”

Dow did not return phone calls or emails.

A majority of Texans, 73 percent, either strongly or somewhat support the death penalty, according to a University of Texas at Austin and Texas Tribune poll published Thursday. The number drops to 53 percent when asked about the option of life without parole.

A majority of Americans also support the death penalty, according to a 2011 Gallup Poll. But at 61 percent, that support is at its lowest point in 39 years, the poll concluded.

Since the state adopted life without parole in 2005 as an alternative to death, it “definitely changed the dynamics” in Bexar County, Herberg said.

Exonerations also have affected the entire criminal justice system, including jurors who must decide if someone lives or dies, said John Schmolesky, a professor at St. Mary’s University School of Law.

“I think it’s moved the pendulum to at least introduce an element of skepticism in capital cases,” Schmolesky said.

The last death sentence in Bexar County came in 2009, a year when only one person was condemned to die although prosecutors had sought the death penalty more often than that.

Given that at least 24 people were sentenced to die in the 11-year period that ended in 2006, Bartee being one of them, that’s a dramatic decrease.

Death sentences in the United States also have dropped, by 65 percent in the past 12 years, with 78 handed down last year, compared with 224 in 2000, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Prosecutors here, in deciding whether to seek the death penalty, weigh the cost of the litigation, the circumstances of the crime and the accused killer’s history of violence, among other factors, Herberg said.

“The future danger aspect of it has always been an issue with the jury,” he added. “If they can’t get out of prison, (communities) are safer.”

Bartee’s own violent past wasn’t known to Cook, his friends or family.

He was sent to prison for raping at knifepoint a girl, 15, and a woman, 20, in separate incidents in 1983, according to court records. At the time Cook was killed, Bartee had been out on parole for only 15 months.

The DNA factor

At 9:35 a.m. on May 2, Bartee was eating lunch and visiting with family. His father and sister planned to witness his execution. So did the father, two sisters and brother-in-law of Cook.

n San Antonio that day, district attorney’s office investigator George Saidler, a retired homicide detective who worked on Cook’s case, was searching the police property room for glasses and cigarettes collected 16 years ago from Cook’s house.

What prompted him was Dow’s new request for DNA evidence testing. Prosecutors needed to know if authorities still had the evidence, especially if a court ruled in Bartee’s favor.

Biery’s decision to stay the execution was a move in the right direction, said civil rights attorney Jeff Blackburn, who heads the Innocence Project of Texas.

“We have to err on the side of finding out every fact that we can,” he said. “I think that if we’ve learned anything, it’s that it’s hard to trust the government when they say (DNA’s) not involved in this case.”

Nationwide, DNA testing has been instrumental in exonerating more than 280 people, the majority in the past 12 years. Of those, 17 spent time on death row, according to The Innocence Project.

Still, that’s just a fraction of the more than 2,000 people falsely convicted in the past 23 years, according to the first national registry of its kind, which was released last week.

In response to the growing number of exonerations and advances in DNA testing technology, the Texas Legislature made changes regarding DNA evidence that could help someone wrongly convicted prove their innocence.

Two changes occurred late last year. Lawmakers made it less difficult for someone convicted to get DNA testing introduced in court. Also, judges now have the power to order that DNA profiles be sent through national and state databases, presumably to find out whether someone else committed the crime.

Bartee, so far, has benefited from the new laws.

“I think you do see the courts are saying, no matter what let’s test it,” Herberg said. “We’re certainly seeing that. That’s the reason for this delay (in Bartee’s case).”

The new evidence laws have ushered in debates about what to test and when. Advocates of testing argue that every avenue needs to be explored, while some prosecutors contend that more DNA testing can be used as a stalling tactic.

“DNA evidence isn’t the silver bullet that’s going to solve every single case,” Schmolesky said. “If the (person) admits he was present, he may have left fingerprints, saliva on cups for example, or things that result in DNA testing but don’t show he committed a crime.”

Local prosecutors haven’t wavered in their belief that further testing for Bartee’s case is a waste of time.

“He wasn’t convicted with DNA evidence but by his own behavior,” Assistant District Attorney Rico Valdez said.

A cautious approach

At noon on May 2, Bartee finished visitation. He was transferred that afternoon from death row in Livingston to Huntsville. He had his final meal before his scheduled 6 p.m. execution and waited to see if Biery’s stay would be overturned.

Just after 7 p.m., when the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals stayed Bartee’s execution, he thanked his family, his supporters, God and his legal team.

With the execution stalled, prosecutors also opted for caution. They sent for testing the glasses and cigarettes Saidler had found in the property room, though no court had ordered it.

They didn’t want lingering unanswered questions about a conviction, if it could be helped.

“We don’t want anyone thinking we just want someone executed,” Valdez said.

Last week the Bexar County crime lab’s testing found on the evidence the DNA of three people — two men and one woman so far unidentified. The results will now be sent through the state and federal databases. As prosecutors hunt for DNA matches, the civil rights case lingers in federal court.

To Valdez, the results so far haven’t changed a thing.

And almost three months to the day Bartee was first scheduled to die, he remains on death row with no new execution date set.

 

Related articles

CALIFORNIA- California defies order to turn over one of three drugs used in executions

May 26, 2012 Source : http://lubbockonline.com

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — California on Friday joined other states in defying a federal government order to turn over a key execution drug.

At issue is the drug sodium thiopental, one of three drugs California and dozens of other states use in lethal injections. It puts the inmate to sleep before fatal doses of two other drugs are delivered. California and others have been purchasing the drug oversees since the United States’ sole manufacturer ceased production of the anesthetic in 2011.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon in March ruled that the Food and Drug Administration erred in allowing the prisons to import the foreign-made drug. The judge ordered the FDA to confiscate all foreign-made sodium thiopental and to warn prisons that it was now illegal to use the drug. The FDA followed the Washington D.C.-based judge’s order and sent demand letters to prisons. But beginning with Nebraska on April 20, more than a dozen states have refused to comply with the FDA order.

On Friday, California joined the protest in a letter sent to the FDA. With 725 Death Row inmates, California has the highest number of condemned prisoners.

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation lawyer Benjamin Rice and the other states with foreign-bought sodium thiopental contend they aren’t bound by the ruling made by a federal judge in Washington D.C. They also argue that the judge was wrong and urged the FDA to appeal.

“The CDCR is unaware of any laws or imperative that would require it to return the thiopental in question,” Rice wrote Domenic Veneziano, director of the FDA’s import operations. Rice wrote that subjecting lethal injection drugs to the same regulations designed to prevent illegal sales of controlled substances is a “strained interpretation” of the law.

FDA spokeswoman Shelly Burgess declined comment because the lawsuit at issue is still pending. The lawsuit was filed by death row inmates in three states

Local and state officials have been striving to restart executions in California since a judge blocked them in 2006 and ordered the state to overhaul its lethal injection process to ensure inmates don’t suffer cruel and unusual harm. The state’s efforts to resume executions in 2010 failed, in part, because its supply of sodium thiopental expired before it could lethally inject rapist-murderer Albert Brown. The state then turned to England-based pharmaceutical distributor Archimedes Pharma and purchased 521 grams of sodium thiopental.

Now, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley is trying to force the issue anew. Cooley asking a judge to order the executions of Mitchell Carleton Sims and Tiequon Aundray Cox, both of whom have been on death row for more than 25 years and have exhausted their appeals. A hearing set for Friday for a judge to hear arguments was postponed until July 13.

Cooley, who is retiring after three terms, is the first district attorney in California to make the request and his attempt comes just months before voters decide whether to abolish capital punishment.

Cooley argues that the state doesn’t need to use sodium thiopental and should scrap its three-drug cocktail. Instead, Cooley wants California to start using a single-drug method employed by other states. Gov. Jerry Brown recently ordered prison officials to explore that option.

Most single-drug states, including Texas, use pentobarbital. But last week Missouri said it would begin executing inmates with the drug propofol, the same drug that accidentally killed pop star Michael Jackson. Since adopting the one-drug protocol in 2009, Ohio has carried out 15 successful executions, according to court documents.

California has executed 13 inmates since it reinstated the death penalty in 1978.

Sims was sentenced to death in 1986 after being convicted of murdering a Glendale pizza deliveryman. Sims, 52, also faces a death sentence in South Carolina for murdering two co-workers.

Cox, 46, was a gang member who gunned down a grandmother, her daughter and two grandchildren in 1984. A 14-year-old boy hid in a closet, which authorities say saved his life.

 

US – States urge feds to help import lethal injection drugs

May 21, 2012 Source : http://edition.cnn.com

A nationwide shortage of a commonly used imported drug used in capital punishment has prompted 15 states on Monday to urge the U.S. Justice Department to intervene. Led by Oklahoma officials, the move comes as the 33 states with the death penalty — all of whom use lethal injection as the primary execution method — struggle to preserve existing stock or search for legally acceptable chemical alternatives. A federal judge in March had blocked the importation of thiopental into states like Arizona, South Carolina, and Georgia saying it was a “misbranded drug and an unapproved drug.” Judge Richard Leon in Washington ordered state corrections departments to return suspected foreign-made thiopental to the Food and Drug Administration. The states called that a “flawed decision” and now want the FDA to appeal that judge’s decision, saying upcoming executions are being undermined. Attorneys General Scott Pruitt in Oklahoma and Marty Jackley in South Dakota are leading the legal effort. “At the very core of the states’ police powers are their powers to enact laws to protect their citizens against violent crimes. As state attorneys general, we are tasked with enforcing those laws, including in instances where capital punishment is authorized for the most heinous of crimes,” according to attorneys general from the 15 states. States argued the federal agency had routinely released the imported drug for executions, a practice suspended after the judge’s ruling. “If the (court) decision is not overturned, we as state attorneys general will be forced to take actions to ensure execution by lethal injection remains a viable option.” This comes after Texas officials disclosed Monday they only have enough drugs on hand for 23 more executions. The next scheduled execution in the U.S. is Bobby Hines in Texas on June 6. Missouri earlier this month announced new protocols, and will use an entirely new drug. Propofol is a surgical anesthetic that in large doses can be administered fatally, but has never been used in the U.S. to put prisoners to death. Officials in Ohio, Texas and other states last year cited a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental in their decisions to separately use pentobarbital, a barbiturate that has alternately been used to put animals to sleep. Some states use a single execution drug, others rely on a three-drug mixture or cocktail. Pentobarbital has become the new legal flashpoint over capital punishment. It was used in a U.S. execution for the first time in December 2010, when it was administered as the first ingredient in a three-drug cocktail used in a lethal injection given to an Oklahoma inmate. It also has limited Food and Drug Administration approval in smaller doses for humans as a mild anesthetic and to treat some seizures. Many physicians say they no longer administer it to people for medical purposes. The second drug in the three-drug cocktail — pancuronium bromide — paralyzes all muscle movement.The third drug, potassium chloride, induces cardiac arrest and death. In 2009, Ohio became the first state to perform an execution with a single drug, using a higher concentration of sodium thiopental. There were no reported complications and its use encouraged other states to follow suit. The nation’s only manufacturer of sodium thiopental since announced it was stopping production. Many capital punishment opponents claim sodium thiopental, which renders the prisoner unconscious, can wear off too quickly, and that some prisoners would actually be awake and able to feel pain as the procedure continued. The European manufacturers of both pentobarbital and sodium thiopental have opposed using their products for executions in the United States. Pentobarbital is widely available and has been used for physician-assisted suicide, including in Oregon, where the practice is legal in limited circumstances. Nationwide, death penalty use continues to decline. Connecticut recently became the latest state to ban capital punishment, although the 11 people on death row will remain there. Only 43 people were executed in the U.S. in 2011, down three from the previous year, and a 56% decline from 13 years ago, when nearly 100 people were put to death. Eighteen have been executed so far in 2012.

The National Registry of Exonerations

may 22, 2012

Hi everyone, i share with u a very interesting website : The National Registry of Enoxerations 

About the Registry 

The National Registry of Exonerations is a joint project of the University of the Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law. We maintain an up to date list of all known exonerations in the United States since 1989.

Link of The National Registry of Exonerations : click here 

US – Over 2,000 People Exonerated In 23 Years

May 21, 2012 Source : http://dfw.cbslocal.com

WASHINGTON (AP) – More than 2,000 people who were falsely convicted of serious crimes have been exonerated in the United States in the past 23 years, according to a new archive compiled at two universities.

There is no official record-keeping system for exonerations of convicted criminals in the country, so academics set one up. The new national registry, or database, painstakingly assembled by the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, is the most complete list of exonerations ever compiled.

The database compiled and analyzed by the researchers contains information on 873 exonerations for which they have the most detailed evidence. The researchers are aware of nearly 1,200 other exonerations, for which they have less data.

They found that those 873 exonerated defendants spent a combined total of more than 10,000 years in prison, an average of more than 11 years each. Nine out of 10 of them are men and half are African-American.

Nearly half of the 873 exonerations were homicide cases, including 101 death sentences. Over one-third of the cases were sexual assaults.

DNA evidence led to exoneration in nearly one-third of the 416 homicides and in nearly two-thirds of the 305 sexual assaults.

Researchers estimate the total number of felony convictions in the United States is nearly a million a year.

The overall registry/list begins at the start of 1989. It gives an unprecedented view of the scope of the problem of wrongful convictions in the United States and the figure of more than 2,000 exonerations “is a good start,” said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions.

“We know there are many more that we haven’t found,” added University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, the editor of the newly opened National Registry of Exonerations.

Counties such as San Bernardino in California and Bexar County in Texas are heavily populated, yet seemingly have no exonerations, a circumstance that the academics say cannot possibly be correct.

The registry excludes at least 1,170 additional defendants. Their convictions were thrown out starting in 1995 amid the periodic exposures of 13 major police scandals around the country. In all the cases, police officers fabricated crimes, usually by planting drugs or guns on innocent defendants.

Regarding the 1,170 additional defendants who were left out of the registry, “we have only sketchy information about most of these cases,” the report said. “Some of these group exonerations are well known; most are comparatively obscure. We began to notice them by accident, as a byproduct of searches for individual cases.”

In half of the 873 exonerations studied in detail, the most common factor leading to false convictions was perjured testimony or false accusations. Forty-three percent of the cases involved mistaken eyewitness identification, and 24 percent of the cases involved false or misleading forensic evidence.

In two out of three homicides, perjury or false accusation was the most common factor leading to false conviction. In four out of five sexual assaults, mistaken eyewitness identification was the leading cause of false conviction.

Seven percent of the exonerations were drug, white-collar and other nonviolent crimes, 5 percent were robberies and 5 percent were other types of violent crimes.

“It used to be that almost all the exonerations we knew about were murder and rape cases. We’re finally beginning to see beyond that. This is a sea change,” said Gross.

Exonerations often take place with no public fanfare and the 106-page report that coincides with the opening of the registry explains why.

On TV, an exoneration looks like a singular victory for a criminal defense attorney, “but there’s usually someone to blame for the underlying tragedy, often more than one person, and the common culprits include defense lawyers as well as police officers, prosecutors and judges. In many cases, everybody involved has egg on their face,” according to the report.

Despite a claim of wrongful conviction that was widely publicized last week, a Texas convict executed two decades ago is not in the database because he has not been officially exonerated. Carlos deLuna was executed for the fatal stabbing of a Corpus Christi convenience store clerk. A team headed by a Columbia University law professor just published a 400-page report that contends DeLuna didn’t kill the clerk, Wanda Jean Lopez.

MISSOURI : Missouri finds a drug option for executions: Propofol

May 18, source : http://www.pennlive.com

KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ The state of Missouri is back in the execution business with a drug that’s never been used to put prisoners to death in the United States.

Stymied by a chemical shortage affecting every death-penalty state, the Missouri Department of Corrections said this week that it now will carry out death sentences with propofol, a widely used surgical anesthetic that also played a factor in singer Michael Jackson’s death.

Attorneys representing some of the state’s death row inmates learned of the plan Thursday, after corrections officials met with some inmates and informed them of the new protocol.

Defense attorneys said it’s too early to say what, if any, legal challenges might be mounted in regard to the new one-drug execution protocol that replaces Missouri’s previous three-drug cocktail.

“It’s something we will have to look at very carefully,” said Joseph Luby, an attorney with the Death Penalty Litigation Clinic in Kansas City. “Propofol has no track record in executions.”

Missouri is the first state to formally adopt the use of propofol, also known by the brand name Diprivan, for use in lethal injections, said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

“No one has used it yet,” Dieter said. “Other states may have considered it.”

Deborah Denno, a law professor at Fordham University in New York and nationally known expert on lethal injection issues, called it a “pretty extraordinary development” that raises many questions.

“I would anticipate legal challenges,” she said.

Missouri’s last execution took place in February 2011. Since shortly after that, the state has been unable to obtain the anesthetic that put inmates to sleep before they are injected with two other chemicals that stop the lungs and heart. Officials also had been unable to obtain an alternative drug that some states had adopted to take its place.

With news that the corrections department had obtained a different drug, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster on Thursday asked the state Supreme Court to set execution dates for 19 inmates. They include Michael Taylor, one of the killers of Ann Harrison, a Kansas City teenager kidnapped in 1989 while waiting for the school bus in front of her house, and Allen Nicklasson, convicted of kidnapping and killing Excelsior Springs businessman Richard Drummond in 1994 after Drummond stopped to help Nicklasson and a co-defendant when their car broke down.

Koster said in his motion that there are no legal impediments or stays now in place to stop the executions.

“Unless this court sets an execution date after a capital murder defendant’s legal process is exhausted, the people of Missouri are without legal remedy,” Koster said in his motion.

According to Supreme Court procedures, lawyers for the inmates must be given the opportunity to file responses before the Supreme Court sets execution dates.

“There is no timetable as far as when the court would rule (on dates),” said spokeswoman Beth Riggert. “The court rules when it deems it appropriate.”

Missouri and every other state using lethal injection once used the same three-drug mixture that employed sodium thiopental to anesthetize prisoners. The drug has been employed in all 68 executions Missouri has carried out since 1989.

Inmates in Missouri and across the country had filed numerous legal challenges to the method, alleging that it created the risk of inflicting cruel and unusual punishment if not administered properly. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the method was not unconstitutional.

In early 2010, shortages of sodium thiopental began cropping up, and in early 2011 the only domestic supplier announced it would no longer manufacture the drug.

States also had difficulty obtaining it from foreign sources, and on March 27, a federal court in Washington, D.C., banned any importation of sodium thiopental and ordered the Food and Drug Administration to contact every state that it believed had any foreign-manufactured thiopental and instruct them to surrender it to the FDA. It also permanently prohibited importation of the drug.

With thiopental in short supply, some states began to substitute another anesthetic, pentobarbital, for use in the three-drug method.

In February 2011, Ohio began using pentobarbital by itself to execute prisoners. Earlier this year, Arizona became the second state to switch to one-drug executions using pentobarbital.

Dieter, with the death penalty information center, said pentobarbital has been used, either by itself or in combination with other drugs, in the last 45 executions in the United States.

But last July, its Danish manufacturer announced that it was imposing restrictions on how pentobarbital was distributed to prevent its use in executions.

Since its on-hand supply of thiopental expired in March 2011, Missouri had been unsuccessful in finding it or pentobarbital.

In announcing its new protocol this week, Missouri Department of Corrections officials did not comment on when they obtained the new drug or where it was obtained.

According to Missouri’s new written protocol, inmates will be injected with 2 grams of propofol. A Kansas City anesthesiologist said that amount is 10 times the dosage that would be used in a surgical setting for a 220-pound patient.

According to Missouri’s new protocol, the chemical will be prepared by a doctor, nurse or pharmacist. An intravenous line will be inserted and monitored by a doctor, nurse or emergency medical technician. Department employees will inject the chemicals.

Doctors say the drug is used widely in medical settings and does not have some of the side effects, like post-operative nausea and vomiting, of previously used anesthetics. It was developed in England in the late 1970s.

Currently, only one execution date is pending in Missouri. Michael Tisius, convicted of killing two jailers in Randolph County, is scheduled to be put to death Aug. 3.

An attorney representing Tisius could not be reached for comment Friday.

Related articles

TEXAS – Texas prison system has drugs for 23 executions

May 19, 2012  source : AP

After prodding from Texas AG, prison system says it has enough drugs to execute 23 inmates
Texas prison officials disclosed Friday they have enough lethal drugs to execute as many as 23 people.
In response to this week’s opinion from the state attorney general’s office that said the Texas Department of Criminal Justice could not withhold information about the drug supply, the department said it currently has 46 2.5-gram vials of pentobarbital. A 5-gram dose — about 3.4 ounces — is the 1st lethal drug used during each execution in Huntsville, according to Texas execution procedures.
The prison agency said it had similar supplies of 2 other drugs also administered to condemned inmates. It did not, though, identify suppliers of the lethal drugs, which the opinion also had addressed.
Executions also involve 100 milligrams of pancuronium bromide and 140 milliequivalents of potassium chloride. Texas has 290 10-milligram vials of the pancuronium bromide — 10 are required per execution — and 737 20-milliequivalent vials of potassium chloride — 7 per punishment.
The department’s written procedures call for a matching set of drugs and syringes “in case unforeseen events make their use necessary.” But in a brief statement emailed to reporters late Friday, the agency said a backup set of lethal drugs for executions “is not actually prepared, but an additional dose is available if needed.”
The attorney general’s opinion, dated Monday, was an answer to public information requests filed earlier this year by the Austin American-Statesman and British newspaper The Guardian.
Prison officials had argued that releasing the information could be harmful to employees and provide death penalty opponents a way to harass the drug suppliers with the hope firms would refuse to do business with the state.
“We find your arguments as to how disclosure of the requested drug quantities would result in the disruption of the execution process or otherwise interfere with law enforcement to be too speculative,” Sean Opperman, an assistant attorney general, wrote in the opinion.
The prison agency had 30 days to comply with the opinion or to challenge it in court. The status of the supplier question was not immediately clear.
Opperman said that, while the attorney general’s office “acknowledge(s) the department’s concerns,” the corrections department didn’t show how disclosure of the information “would create a substantial threat of physical harm to any individual.”
Department officials previously had indicated they had a sufficient supply to handle upcoming executions. At least five are scheduled for this summer, including one early next month.
Last year, one of the drugs Texas had used in the process, sodium thiopental, became unavailable when its European supplier bowed to pressure from death penalty opponents and stopped making it. No other vendor could be found, so the drug was replaced by pentobarbital.
The physical effects of pentobarbital on condemned inmates have not been noticeable during the executions, but the financial cost to the state has risen considerably. Prison officials put the cost of the previous mixture at $83.35. It’s now $1286.86, with the higher cost primarily due to pentobarbital.

Is the Death Penalty Ever Justified?

May 18, 2012 Source : http://www.huffingtonpost.com

Yemen, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, China, Sudan.

No, this is not a list of countries with records of human rights abuses; nor is it a list of countries with ruthless dictators; nor is it a list of countries the United States has condemned at some point within the past few months.

Actually, it’s an incomplete list. Add the U.S., and you are one step closer to completing a list of countries that kill their own people.

Every country mentioned currently allows its citizens to be sentenced to death. Only China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia execute more people than the U.S. does, and they are all on a list of only 20 nations who performed executions in 2009.

But, to be fair, executions are handed out with a somewhat honorable intention: to deter, and ultimately reduce, crime. It is reasonable, then, to question whether or not that works.


2012-05-17-ExecutionsVsCrimes.png
Indeed, the numbers do not add up. There is no evidence suggesting that increasing executions leads to a reduction in crime. In fact, as executions increased in the late ’80s, the number of crime rose along with them. Similarly, both the number of crimes and the number of executions have fallen in the past decade. If anything, the evidence concludes that increasing executions might actually correlate with higher crime.

Regardless, the only thing being accomplished by the death penalty is death itself. A country that brutally murders its citizens seems as far from developed or democratic as it can possibly be. If the United States is the beacon of freedom and justice that it claims to be, it would abolish the death penalty tomorrow.

Not to mention the unintended consequences that come with any policy, and are not easy to undo when it comes to the death penalty. A recent New York Times editorial tells the tale of Carlos DeLuna, an alleged murderer executed by the state of Texas in 1989. According to studies involving the case, DeLuna was likely innocent. It would be foolish to believe that DeLuna’s case is isolated.

At the very least, our system needs to start holding people accountable. The prosecutors in DeLuna’s case reportedly withheld crucial exculpatory evidence that led to his conviction and ultimate death — an unfortunate tactic that is widespread and goes unpunished. Prosecutors who act in such a way are, unquestionably, more guilty of murder than the innocent people they target.

Last August, Governor Rick Perry of Texas lambasted the Syrian government for threatening the safety of its own people. The next month, he received a roaring ovation after bragging about his authorization of 234 executions, the most in history.

Well, Mr. Perry, what’s the difference?

OHIO – Death as bargaining chip? Ohio prosecutor slammed

May 17, 2012 Source : http://www.coshoctontribune.com

COLUMBUS — Within days of a drug-related slaying in suburban Cleveland, six men were indicted on charges that carried the possibility of a death sentence. Six months later, all had been allowed to plead to lesser charges, including four who received probation and never went to prison.

In short, the men quickly went from facing the possibility of being strapped to a gurney and having 5 grams of pentobarbital injected into their veins, to prison sentences more typical for robbers and thieves.

“It probably was a negotiating tool,” said defense attorney Reuben Sheperd, who represented defendant Alex Ford. “You’ll be more motivated than you were in other circumstances.”

Such scenarios are typical in the county home to Cleveland, where prosecutor Bill Mason pursues dozens of offenders on capital charges each year at added expense to taxpayers and at the risk of some defendants ending up on death row for charges that would be minor elsewhere, even as the number of death penalty prosecutions plummets in Ohio and nationwide, according to an analysis of records by theAssociated Press.

Elsewhere in Ohio, prosecutors are pursuing only the most heinous crimes as death penalty cases and are refusing to plea bargain, or are using a 2005 law that allows them to seek life with no chance of parole and never place capital punishment on the table.

Mason denies he uses the death penalty as a negotiating tool but also says he never rules out the possibility of lesser charges as more information about a case comes to light.

The 2010 case in the suburb of Parma cost Cuyahoga County taxpayers more than $120,000 — the price of the experts and attorneys appointed because the cases involved the death penalty.

Defense attorneys have long complained about the high number of capital indictments in Cuyahoga County, a practice that precedes Mason but that he continued after first taking office in 2000. But now one of the state’s most conservative and pro-death penalty prosecutors is weighing in.

Joe Deters, prosecutor in Hamilton County, renewed questions about Cuyahoga County’s approach during meetings of an Ohio Supreme Court task force. The group, which meets again Thursday , is looking for ways to improve the state’s death penalty law.

“To use the death penalty to force a plea bargain, I think it’s unethical to do that,” Deters said in an interview.

Hamilton County, home to Cincinnati, has sent the most inmates to Ohio’s death row — 61 over 30 years — though the county has indicted fewer than 200 people in three decades. Deters doesn’t accept plea bargains once he decides to pursue a death penalty case.

Mason says a committee of assistant prosecutors reviews the evidence of each death penalty case and encourages defense attorneys to produce reasons that could weigh against the death penalty.

“When we seek the death penalty it is not to secure a plea bargain, but instead to equally apply the law,” Mason said.

Despite the higher number of capital indictments, Mason’s record of winning death sentences is no better than other counties, some of them smaller than Cuyahoga, with about 1.3 million residents.

From 2009 to 2011, for example, Cuyahoga County indicted 135 defendants on charges that could result in a death sentence, according to records maintained by Mason’s office. Only two of those offenders were sent to death row, including Anthony Sowell, convicted in 2011 of killing 11 women.

The rest either pleaded guilty, usually with the death penalty charges withdrawn, or were convicted but not sentenced to death. In six cases, charges were dismissed.

By contrast, Butler County in southwest Ohio, with 368,000 residents, recorded three death sentences during the same time but indicted just six people on capital charges.

“The proof of guilt in a death penalty case has to be near absolute, not a crap shoot,” said Butler County prosecutor Michael Gmoser . In addition, “The case has to shock the conscience of the community,” he said.

Other prosecutors and counties have faced similar criticism for high numbers of indictment. In Philadelphia, former district attorney Lynne Abraham was once dubbed “America’s deadliest DA” by The New York Times Magazine for her aggressive pursuit of the death penalty. Some African-American groups had criticized her for her death penalty stance.

In Arizona’s Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, capital cases were so numerous that in 2007 the state’s Supreme Court Chief Justice convened a task force to look at ways “to address the unprecedented number of capital cases awaiting trial” in the county.

Cuyahoga County brings so many death penalty cases that, in a twist on tough-on-crime politics, candidates running for prosecutor promised to vastly reduce the number of indictments. Mason is not running for re-election.

Mason’s approach runs counter to a 40-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision that threw out the country’s death penalty laws in part over the arbitrariness of the laws in place at the time, said Ohio state public defender Tim Young.

The risk of someone ending up on death row for a crime that might be a far lesser offense elsewhere “seems like a wildly dangerous use” of the death penalty, Young added.

Just 78 inmates nationally were sentenced to death in 2011, the lowest number since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, and nearly two-thirds lower than the 224 death sentences in 2000.

High numbers of capital charges, and the use of plea bargains in death penalty cases, have been examined in several states by the American Bar Association. The ABA’s 2007 review of Ohio’s death penalty system also cited Cuyahoga County’s high number of indictments.

In Kentucky, the ABA noted that the large number of capital indictments — dozens if not hundreds — compared with death sentences “calls into question as to whether current charging practices ensure the fair, efficient, and effective enforcement of criminal law.”

In Tennessee, a 2004 report by the state’s Comptroller of the Treasury that examined the law’s cost found widespread disparities with how prosecutors used the law, with some treating it as a “bargaining chip” to secure plea bargains. “Meanwhile, defense attorneys must prepare their cases, often without knowing the punishment the prosecutor intends to seek,” the report said.