Nebraska has not carried out an execution since 1997 and has never carried out one by lethal injection. Carey Dean Moore (53) could change that.
Moore was sentenced to death for the 1979 murders of two Omaha taxi drivers in botched robberies.
He came within a week of execution in 2007. Six days before his execution was scheduled to be carried out, the state's high court issued a stay because it wanted to consider whether the electric chair should still be used. In 2008, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled that the use of the electric chair ammounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Lethal injection is now the state's sole method of execution, and on Friday they recieved the last drug they needed to carry out an execution by lethal injection - sodium thiopentlal - in the midst of a worldwide shortage of the drug. (Seriously, with the drug in such short supply, why are we continuing to waste it on legal murder???)
The last execution in Nebraska was that of Robert Williams, who was executed in the electric chair in 1997.
Attorney General Jon Bruning said a motion requesting that a date for Moore's execution be set was filed with the Nebraska Supreme Court on Monday. It's not yet clear how soon the Supreme Court might set a date for Moore to die.
It's hoped that legal challenges to Nebraska's new execution method continue to hold off the use of the death penalty in the state for several years. Lawsuits attacking, for example, the vague training requirements of the new lethal injection protocol are expected.
Friday, 28 January 2011
UK: Men charged over leaflets condoning execution of homosexuals
United Kingdom: Two men in Derby who were accused of handing out leaflets proclaiming homosexuals should be executed are the first to be charged under new laws against stirring up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation.
The leaflets, entitled 'The Death Penalty?' were handed out outside a Derby mosque in July 2010, and were reportedly also pushed through letterboxes, by Razwan Javed (30) and Kabir Ahmed (27).
The pair were reportedly arrested after a tip-off from a member of the public, and could face up to seven years in prison or an unlimited fine if convicted at crown court.
Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill said: "We welcome the Attorney General’s decision to allow this prosecution to go ahead. We lobbied for a number of years for a specific law to protect gay people, matching offences against inciting racial and religious hatred.
“Materials like the leaflets posted to homes in Derby create fear and inflame hatred and violence towards gay people. We uncovered a range of similar materials during our campaign to secure much-needed legal protections in this area.”
The leaflets, entitled 'The Death Penalty?' were handed out outside a Derby mosque in July 2010, and were reportedly also pushed through letterboxes, by Razwan Javed (30) and Kabir Ahmed (27).
The pair were reportedly arrested after a tip-off from a member of the public, and could face up to seven years in prison or an unlimited fine if convicted at crown court.
Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill said: "We welcome the Attorney General’s decision to allow this prosecution to go ahead. We lobbied for a number of years for a specific law to protect gay people, matching offences against inciting racial and religious hatred.
“Materials like the leaflets posted to homes in Derby create fear and inflame hatred and violence towards gay people. We uncovered a range of similar materials during our campaign to secure much-needed legal protections in this area.”
Georgia Executes Emmanuel Hammond
Emmanuel Hammond (45) was executed by lethal injection in Georgia on Tuesday, for the 1988 murder of an Atlanta preschool teacher.
The execution was briefly halted by a last minute appeal by Hammond's lawyers which questioned the legality of the state using execution drugs which they said came from a company operating out of the back of a London driving school. In the midst of a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental, part of the three-drug lethal cocktail used by most death penalty states, Hammond's lawyers sought more information as to where the state obtained the drug.
However, state and federal courts turned down the appeals and Hammond was pronounced dead in the state prison in Jackon at 11:39pm.
The execution is the first to be carried out in Georgia in 2011, and the 4th so far this year in the United States.
The execution was briefly halted by a last minute appeal by Hammond's lawyers which questioned the legality of the state using execution drugs which they said came from a company operating out of the back of a London driving school. In the midst of a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental, part of the three-drug lethal cocktail used by most death penalty states, Hammond's lawyers sought more information as to where the state obtained the drug.
However, state and federal courts turned down the appeals and Hammond was pronounced dead in the state prison in Jackon at 11:39pm.
The execution is the first to be carried out in Georgia in 2011, and the 4th so far this year in the United States.
Thursday, 13 January 2011
Will Governor Pat Quinn Abolish the Death Penalty in Illinois?
The fate of Illinois's costly, flawed and entirely pointless death penalty now rests solely in the hands of Governor Pat Quinn after the Senate approved legislation to abolish it on Tuesday.
Yesterday the Governor said that he would "follow my conscience" in deciding whether to sign the bill to abolish it. He declined to give a firm answer on what he plans to do - however, he did point out the history of "serious problems" which Illinois has had with the death penalty. Quinn said such problems could have ended in "terrible tragedies" had wrongfully condemned inmates not been exonerated. It's rare for politicians to actually admit mistakes so this looks promising.
In Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley is not a happy bunny with the way things are going down. He said certain crimes "should be handled" by the death penalty. Daley believed that Illinois doesn't need to scrap the death penalty - they just need to get rid of all those nasty little "imperfections" in the law which send innocent people to their deaths. This can apparently be done by increasing the use of DNA testing. Yes, that would help, but simple human error will always exist. Jailhouse snitches will always make stuff up under oath to get lighter sentences, police will always use less than ethical tactics to get confessions, eye-witnesses will always be wrong, jilted exes will always lie... and so on. How do we get rid of these "imperfections", huh? We don't. We simply can't.
But the mayor said he was trying not to influence Quinn's decision. Yeah, I'm sure. "It's up to him," Daley said.
Quinn's hesitation to decide is causing disruption to capital murder trials in Illinois.
Take your time Governor... Just make the right choice! And by take your time, I mean soon please!
Yesterday the Governor said that he would "follow my conscience" in deciding whether to sign the bill to abolish it. He declined to give a firm answer on what he plans to do - however, he did point out the history of "serious problems" which Illinois has had with the death penalty. Quinn said such problems could have ended in "terrible tragedies" had wrongfully condemned inmates not been exonerated. It's rare for politicians to actually admit mistakes so this looks promising.
In Chicago, Mayor Richard Daley is not a happy bunny with the way things are going down. He said certain crimes "should be handled" by the death penalty. Daley believed that Illinois doesn't need to scrap the death penalty - they just need to get rid of all those nasty little "imperfections" in the law which send innocent people to their deaths. This can apparently be done by increasing the use of DNA testing. Yes, that would help, but simple human error will always exist. Jailhouse snitches will always make stuff up under oath to get lighter sentences, police will always use less than ethical tactics to get confessions, eye-witnesses will always be wrong, jilted exes will always lie... and so on. How do we get rid of these "imperfections", huh? We don't. We simply can't.
But the mayor said he was trying not to influence Quinn's decision. Yeah, I'm sure. "It's up to him," Daley said.
Quinn's hesitation to decide is causing disruption to capital murder trials in Illinois.
Take your time Governor... Just make the right choice! And by take your time, I mean soon please!
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
Illinois Votes to Abolish the Death Penalty - Gov. Now Decides Its Fate
(I haven't had time to write my own article on this so I'm sourcing one. Sorry - it's pretty long)
Source: The Chicago Tribune, Jan 11th 2011
SPRINGFIELD — — Gov. Pat Quinn now has to decide the fate of the death penalty in Illinois, a state whose troubling record of condemning innocent men to death row put it at the center of the national debate over capital punishment.
The Democratic-led Senate on Tuesday approved legislation to end the death penalty in Illinois by a vote of 35-22, with two senators voting present. The House approved the measure a week earlier, and now it's up to Quinn.
Quinn's staff on Tuesday said only that he would review the bill. During the fall campaign, the Democratic governor said he supports "capital punishment when applied carefully and fairly."
But Quinn also backed the moratorium on executions put in place 10 years ago by Republican Gov. George Ryan, who in 2003 cleared the state's death row after a string of men who had sat there were found innocent.
The gravity of the issue played out Tuesday under the bright lights of the ornate Senate Chamber. Looking down from the spectator gallery was Gordon "Randy" Steidl, who spent 17 years in prison, including 12 on death row, after he was wrongfully convicted of a 1986 double-murder.
After the vote, Steidl said he felt senators knew "in their heart and soul" that Illinois should abolish the death penalty because the cost of making a mistake is "irreversible."
"We're all human, and we all make mistakes," Steidl said. "I think the Senate saw it, and I'm pretty sure that Gov. Quinn is aware of it."
Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez argued against the measure at a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting early Tuesday. Following the vote Alvarez said she was "extremely disappointed" and that the Senate made its decision "without a full, open and public debate."
Alvarez called the death penalty "a deterrent to violent crime in the most heinous of cases" that should be available, particularly "when we have witnessed outrageous crimes such as the senseless murder of five Chicago police officers this past year."
The Senate bill was championed by Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, who pointed to Steidl and urged fellow lawmakers to seize the chance to "join the civilized world" and end the death penalty in Illinois.
Raoul noted that law enforcement had been certain that Jerry Hobbs and Kevin Fox were guilty of killing their own young daughters in high-profile crimes in the Chicago area. Both men were exonerated by DNA evidence.
"I cannot impose my values on you. You have to make your own reconciliation," Raoul said. "But I want you, as you push that button (to vote), to not be so removed from the medically trained man or woman who has to inject the serum in the person of a capital crime."
Patrick Smith, Jerry Hobbs' stepfather, said Tuesday that seeing what his stepson went through changed his position on the death penalty. "Being a lifelong resident of Texas, I'm wondering how many innocent ones we might have killed," Smith said.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down death penalty statutes in 40 states, including Illinois, in 1972. Illinois reinstated capital punishment in 1977, and is now among 35 states with the death penalty. New York, New Jersey and New Mexico have done away with the death penalty in the last three years.
The fate of 15 people now on death row in Illinois is uncertain. They would not be affected by the legislation now being considered by Quinn, according to the Department of Corrections. However, the moratorium on executing prisoners could remain in place.
The death penalty also remains a possibility in ongoing cases. On Tuesday, a jury was being chosen in the trial Laurence Lovejoy, who is accused of killing his 16-year-old stepdaughter in 2004.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, and when attorneys notified DuPage County Judge Kathryn Creswell of the Senate vote, she directed jury selection to continue and said that the death penalty "is still the law of the land."
Andrea Lyon, a professor at DePaul University College of Law and director of the Center for Justice in Capital Cases, said she expected Quinn to sign the legislation as a cost-saving measure, if for no other reason.
She said Illinois spends about $100 million a year on death penalty cases, and that prosecutors seek it nearly 60 times for every one defendant who receives it.
Both sides of the debate were aired on the Senate floor Tuesday. Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora, rejected suggestions by backers of the ban that it is tougher for killers to spend life in prison agonizing over their crimes.
"The Charles Mansons, the Ted Bundys, they are not going to sit in prison and repent," Holmes said. "They are sociopaths."
Sen. Kirk Dillard, R- Hinsdale, said the people of his district believe in executions for mass murderers and killers of police, prison guards and children.
"I think there's still a place for the death penalty for the worst of the worst of our society," Dillard said.
Dillard and Sen. Bill Haine, an Alton Democrat and former Madison County state's attorney, called for putting the question of whether to impose a ban before Illinois citizens.
But Sen. Toi Hutchinson, D- Olympia Fields, said lawmakers are elected to make the tough decisions. She said this nation's "system of justice is actually predicated upon the protection of the innocent, and executing one innocent person is too high a price to pay."
After Ryan put the moratorium in place, Illinois followed up with a number of steps to reform the death penalty process, including taping interrogations under a proposal forged by President Barack Obama when he was in the Illinois Senate.
Only days before he left office in January 2003, Ryan granted clemency to 164 death row inmates even though sources on the Illinois Prisoner Review Board said the panel recommended clemency for no more than 10.
Lawrence Marshall, a Stanford University law professor who co-founded Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, said the death penalty moratorium gave people time to judge the legal system without executions taking place.
"People begin to recognize one can have a very tough law enforcement system that doesn't involve execution," Marshall said.
Source: The Chicago Tribune, Jan 11th 2011
SPRINGFIELD — — Gov. Pat Quinn now has to decide the fate of the death penalty in Illinois, a state whose troubling record of condemning innocent men to death row put it at the center of the national debate over capital punishment.
The Democratic-led Senate on Tuesday approved legislation to end the death penalty in Illinois by a vote of 35-22, with two senators voting present. The House approved the measure a week earlier, and now it's up to Quinn.
Quinn's staff on Tuesday said only that he would review the bill. During the fall campaign, the Democratic governor said he supports "capital punishment when applied carefully and fairly."
But Quinn also backed the moratorium on executions put in place 10 years ago by Republican Gov. George Ryan, who in 2003 cleared the state's death row after a string of men who had sat there were found innocent.
The gravity of the issue played out Tuesday under the bright lights of the ornate Senate Chamber. Looking down from the spectator gallery was Gordon "Randy" Steidl, who spent 17 years in prison, including 12 on death row, after he was wrongfully convicted of a 1986 double-murder.
After the vote, Steidl said he felt senators knew "in their heart and soul" that Illinois should abolish the death penalty because the cost of making a mistake is "irreversible."
"We're all human, and we all make mistakes," Steidl said. "I think the Senate saw it, and I'm pretty sure that Gov. Quinn is aware of it."
Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez argued against the measure at a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting early Tuesday. Following the vote Alvarez said she was "extremely disappointed" and that the Senate made its decision "without a full, open and public debate."
Alvarez called the death penalty "a deterrent to violent crime in the most heinous of cases" that should be available, particularly "when we have witnessed outrageous crimes such as the senseless murder of five Chicago police officers this past year."
The Senate bill was championed by Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, who pointed to Steidl and urged fellow lawmakers to seize the chance to "join the civilized world" and end the death penalty in Illinois.
Raoul noted that law enforcement had been certain that Jerry Hobbs and Kevin Fox were guilty of killing their own young daughters in high-profile crimes in the Chicago area. Both men were exonerated by DNA evidence.
"I cannot impose my values on you. You have to make your own reconciliation," Raoul said. "But I want you, as you push that button (to vote), to not be so removed from the medically trained man or woman who has to inject the serum in the person of a capital crime."
Patrick Smith, Jerry Hobbs' stepfather, said Tuesday that seeing what his stepson went through changed his position on the death penalty. "Being a lifelong resident of Texas, I'm wondering how many innocent ones we might have killed," Smith said.
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down death penalty statutes in 40 states, including Illinois, in 1972. Illinois reinstated capital punishment in 1977, and is now among 35 states with the death penalty. New York, New Jersey and New Mexico have done away with the death penalty in the last three years.
The fate of 15 people now on death row in Illinois is uncertain. They would not be affected by the legislation now being considered by Quinn, according to the Department of Corrections. However, the moratorium on executing prisoners could remain in place.
The death penalty also remains a possibility in ongoing cases. On Tuesday, a jury was being chosen in the trial Laurence Lovejoy, who is accused of killing his 16-year-old stepdaughter in 2004.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty, and when attorneys notified DuPage County Judge Kathryn Creswell of the Senate vote, she directed jury selection to continue and said that the death penalty "is still the law of the land."
Andrea Lyon, a professor at DePaul University College of Law and director of the Center for Justice in Capital Cases, said she expected Quinn to sign the legislation as a cost-saving measure, if for no other reason.
She said Illinois spends about $100 million a year on death penalty cases, and that prosecutors seek it nearly 60 times for every one defendant who receives it.
Both sides of the debate were aired on the Senate floor Tuesday. Sen. Linda Holmes, D-Aurora, rejected suggestions by backers of the ban that it is tougher for killers to spend life in prison agonizing over their crimes.
"The Charles Mansons, the Ted Bundys, they are not going to sit in prison and repent," Holmes said. "They are sociopaths."
Sen. Kirk Dillard, R- Hinsdale, said the people of his district believe in executions for mass murderers and killers of police, prison guards and children.
"I think there's still a place for the death penalty for the worst of the worst of our society," Dillard said.
Dillard and Sen. Bill Haine, an Alton Democrat and former Madison County state's attorney, called for putting the question of whether to impose a ban before Illinois citizens.
But Sen. Toi Hutchinson, D- Olympia Fields, said lawmakers are elected to make the tough decisions. She said this nation's "system of justice is actually predicated upon the protection of the innocent, and executing one innocent person is too high a price to pay."
After Ryan put the moratorium in place, Illinois followed up with a number of steps to reform the death penalty process, including taping interrogations under a proposal forged by President Barack Obama when he was in the Illinois Senate.
Only days before he left office in January 2003, Ryan granted clemency to 164 death row inmates even though sources on the Illinois Prisoner Review Board said the panel recommended clemency for no more than 10.
Lawrence Marshall, a Stanford University law professor who co-founded Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions, said the death penalty moratorium gave people time to judge the legal system without executions taking place.
"People begin to recognize one can have a very tough law enforcement system that doesn't involve execution," Marshall said.
Last Minute Stay of Execution for Cleve Foster
Foster has always insisted that his friend and former roommate, Sheldon Ward, who was also condemned for the killing, acting alone in the murder of Nyaneur Pal, who was shot in the head and dumped in a ditch in Tarrant County. Ward died of cancer in prison last May.
Foster's attorneys had asked the Supreme Court to stop the execution on the grounds that trial attorneys failed to get testimony from a blood spatter expert to counter a detective's testimony that Ward couldn't have killed and moved Pal's body by himself.
"The state of Texas is on the verge of executing an innocent man," attorney Clint Broden told the court.
In the court's brief order to halt the execution, two Justices indicated that they would have allowed the punishment to proceed.
More than 60 protesters were gathered at the Texas Capitol last night. They rejoiced when they heard the news of the of the stay of execution by phone call from other protesters gathered outside the prison in Huntsville where Texas does its killing.
Foster would have been the first person to be executed in Texas this year had the stay not been granted.
Oklahoma Executes Jeffrey Matthews
Oklahoma has executed 96 condemned inmate's since the state resumed executions in 1976. Only Texas and Virginia have carried out more - 456 and 108 respectively. Oklahoma is also responsible for both of the executions carried out so far this year.
Tuesday, 11 January 2011
Summary of the past seven days of death penalty news
I'm sorry - I haven't posted anything in nearly a week when there has been a LOT going on because I've been rushed off my feet (major exams imminent - the joy of being a teenager). Anyway, because I've been so neglectful, I'm going to try and summarise the past week's worth of death penalty news, and rework my schedule in future to keep on top of things.
Jan 7th - Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter granted the first posthumous pardon in the state's history to Joe Arridy (pictured, on the right), 72 years after he was executed for a crime he had nothing to do with. Arridy had an IQ of just 46 (nowadays the cut-off line for competency is 70 - a person with an IQ below that cannot be executed in the United States.) His so-called confession was a mumbled one which only the sheriff heard. ) His so-called confession was a mumbled one which only the sheriff heard. ) His so-called confession was a mumbled one which only the sheriff heard. Arridy is burried behind the state prison in the same place as the man who confessed to the crime for which Arridy was executed - and who maintained until his execution that Arridy had nothing to do with it. Despite Arridy's 'confession' being false, despite the fact he was likely not even in the city when the murder took place, and despite the fact another man confessed, Arridy was executed an innocent man in 1939.
Jan 7th - A panel in Texas heard from arson experts who had reviewed the evidence which sent Cameron Todd Willingham (pictured) to the death chamber in 2004 for the deaths of his 3 children in a house fire in 1991. Several experts have challenged the conclusion of arson as a cause for the fire, and Willingham maintained his innocence even in his final statement. The case has stirred up a lot of attention because death penalty opponents are aiming to have the Willingham case become the first one in which a prisoner is formally declared wrongfully put to death. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has so far done his utmost to see the inquiry stifled.
Jan 6th - The BBC's Today programme ran a story about Reprieve's investigation into Britain's shameful export of drugs to the US which would be put to use killing people. Originally it was thought that only sodium thiopental was being sourced in the UK, but now it's been discovered that the other two drugs used in executions (pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride) are also been exported by the UK. Not too pleased with my own supposedly-against-the-death-penalty country right now. The drugs have been used to execute at least one person so far. (You can read some really good articles about the whole scandal on the Guardian's website if you're interested)
Jan 6th - Oklahoma executed Billy Don Alverson for the 1995 killing of a convenience store worker in Tulsa. Alverson was pronounced dead at 6:10pm and apologised to the victim's family in his final statement. Alverson becomes the first person to be executed in the US in 2011.
Jan 7th - Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter granted the first posthumous pardon in the state's history to Joe Arridy (pictured, on the right), 72 years after he was executed for a crime he had nothing to do with. Arridy had an IQ of just 46 (nowadays the cut-off line for competency is 70 - a person with an IQ below that cannot be executed in the United States.) His so-called confession was a mumbled one which only the sheriff heard. ) His so-called confession was a mumbled one which only the sheriff heard. ) His so-called confession was a mumbled one which only the sheriff heard. Arridy is burried behind the state prison in the same place as the man who confessed to the crime for which Arridy was executed - and who maintained until his execution that Arridy had nothing to do with it. Despite Arridy's 'confession' being false, despite the fact he was likely not even in the city when the murder took place, and despite the fact another man confessed, Arridy was executed an innocent man in 1939. Jan 7th - A panel in Texas heard from arson experts who had reviewed the evidence which sent Cameron Todd Willingham (pictured) to the death chamber in 2004 for the deaths of his 3 children in a house fire in 1991. Several experts have challenged the conclusion of arson as a cause for the fire, and Willingham maintained his innocence even in his final statement. The case has stirred up a lot of attention because death penalty opponents are aiming to have the Willingham case become the first one in which a prisoner is formally declared wrongfully put to death. Texas Gov. Rick Perry has so far done his utmost to see the inquiry stifled. Jan 9th - The Texas Moratorium Network announced they had so far raised $3,573 for Anthony Graves, who spent 18 years on Texas death row for a crime he didn't commit before being recently exonerated. The state has yet to give him any compensation for their inhuman blunder which very nearly took his life.
Jan 10th - Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon commuted the sentence of death row inmate Richard Clay to life without the possibility of parole - just over a day before he was scheduled to be executed. The governor gave no reason for the decision to commute the sentence and in fact stated he was convinced Clay was involved in the 1994 killing he was sentenced for, and that he supported the jury's verdict of first degree murder. It's unclear yet whether the decision was influenced by allegations from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that Missouri cut corners when rehearsing executions due to the national shortage of sodium thiopental, the first drug used in the lethal injection cocktail by most states. The ACLU believe Missouri didn't use the drug in an October rehearsal aimed at determining whether staff understood how to administer the drugs properly, possibly to try and make the dwindling supply last longer so they could carry out more executions. Corrections officials say the state was adequately prepared.
That's all I've got time to write just now, I'll try to update this later.
- SB
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
The battle of the death penalty in Illinois
Supporters of the death penalty are prepared to try and stop them. No surprises there.
Illinois hasn't had an execution for a long time, due to a suspension on executions in 2000 by the Governor of that time, George Ryan, after it was discovered that 13 men on death row in the state had been wrongly convicted. Death row was later emptied after Ryan commuted the sentences of all 167 condemned inmates in Illinois. There has no been an execution since because the ban is still there. Despite this, defendants are still being tried and sentenced to death, with 15 men currently awaiting execution in Illinois who have no idea whether those sentences will be carried out, and when it might happen. That means the state is still paying the extortionate extra costs of capital trials and appeals and such for absolutely no reason at all. Just for the sake of sending men to death row rather than sentencing them to life without parole. Why?
Cost was just one of the arguments made by supporters of abolishing the death penalty, roughly 30 of whom gathered at the state Capitol in Springfield on Tuesday, lobbying lawmakers to complete work on a bill that stalled last month as it awaited a House floor vote. They said that deficit-ridden Illinois cannot afford the additional financial costs of capital trials, and that the death penalty system in place was flawed irreparably.
State Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago, the sponsor of the abolition measure in the Senate, believes there is enough support of the bill to get it passed this week. "It's time," he said.
Supporters of the death penalty - who include prosecutors and the relatives of murder victims - are condemning the movement towards abolition, which they believe to be a rush to judgment on the issue.
Regarding the cost issues surrounding the death penalty, Sheldon Sobol, president of the Illinois State's Attorneys Association, said that it "cheapens the value of life" to make fiscal arguements. I personnaly think the death penalty itself cheapens the value of life, since any state which applies it is basically saying it's okay to take a life to stop other people from doing exactly that, but maybe that's just me. Sobol, and others, urged further review of the system before the death penalty is removed from the books. That's what they always say. And then in ten years time nothing will have been done and another fifty, hundred men could be dead and there might just be an innocent one or two or three among them. The system doesn't need reviewed; that's just talk. It needs rebuilt.
Death penalty proponents maintain that it's not clear whether the death penalty creates a financial drain on the state, as those of us who oppose the death penalty believe. They also say that some studies suggest it does deter crime. Yes, but there are plenty which don't. The majority of states which don't have the death penalty have murder rates lower than the national average.
The way it's sitting right now, this is a race against time. I'm genuinely excited and cautiously optimistic right now, despite earlier rantings. The abolition bill has already gone through the committee process in the House and is awaiting a floor vote, and the whole process will have to start over again if it isn't done before the seating of the new General Assembly on January 12th. And when this seating occurs, the Legislature will be more conservative than it currently is, with Democrats still controlling both chambers but by smaller margins. This basically means it will be more difficult to get this close again.
"We've got to get it done this week," said Ryan Keith, a lobbyist for the Illinois Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. Well summarized.
All I have to add is: let's hope it goes through. One more state without the death penalty would be a very welcome thing.
Monday, 3 January 2011
Houston Chronicle - "It's time for capital punishment to become Texas history"
Source: Houston Chronicle, Jan. 1 2011
The death penalty in Texas is fraught with demonstrable error, and the people of the state seem more willing to deal with that fact than their leaders.
Events of the past year have convinced us that defendants have been executed on the basis of invalid evidence. They may or may not have been guilty, but the fact that we have convicted people based on faulty evidence leads inexorably to a horrible likelihood — that we have executed innocent people. The high number of death row prisoners eventually exonerated makes a strong case that other innocent but less fortunate prisoners have been wrongfully put to death.
We don't lose sleep over the execution of guilty murderers. But the possible or probable execution of the innocent should trouble every Texan.
The freeing of Anthony Graves after 18 years in prison, many on death row, for a false murder conviction is only the most recent example of how badly the system is broken. His ordeal underlines how long the victims of wrongful death sentences must suffer in the cases where the errors are discovered before execution.
Two men, Cameron Todd Willingham, convicted of murder by arson, and Claude Jones, convicted of murder during a robbery, were executed on the basis of evidence later shown to be questionable or false.
We are heartened by figures showing that Texas and Harris County juries are sending fewer defendants to death row. Once known as the death penalty capital of the United States, Harris County has relinquished that grim title in recent years. If Texas were a nation, it would have been among the top state executioners in the world in past decades, in the company of judicial pariahs like China and Iran.
Since executions resumed in 1976, 464 have been carried out in Huntsville. Texas still led the nation in 2010 with 17 executions, more than twice the number of runner-up Ohio. This past year juries in Texas sentenced only eight people to die, while Harris County has had only two capital punishment sentences handed down.
Legal experts attribute the drop in death judgments to the availability of a life-without-parole statute passed by the Texas Legislature in 2005, and to the escalating costs to counties of the appeals process involving capital sentences. The exoneration of 11 Texas death row residents has undoubtedly made the public - and potential jury pools - more aware of the possibility that a death sentence could be an irreversible mistake.
Still, even as Texas juries show increased restraint in utilizing capital punishment, Texas elected officials - including most jurists - seem equally determined not to examine its flaws. When District Judge Kevin Fine attempted to conduct a hearing on the constitutionality of the death penalty as practiced in Texas, Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos first ordered her prosecutors to stand mute in court and then successfully appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to halt the hearing. More than 60 people, including former Texas Gov. Mark White, have filed a brief with the high court in support of allowing the death penalty hearing to go forward.
When the state Forensic Science Commission attempted to investigate whether Willingham was executed for the murder of his three children based on faulty arson evidence, Gov. Rick Perry replaced the commission chairman and several board members. A protracted and inconclusive investigation followed. An attempt by an Austin judge to conduct a hearing on the Willingham case has also been stymied by an appeals judge, who ruled that the jurist should have recused himself.
The accumulating evidence indicates that the current application of the death penalty in Texas involves an unacceptably high risk of killing innocent people. Yet even as the evidence of false convictions and wrongful executions piles up, only the participants at the base of the Texas criminal justice system, jury members, seem to be waking up to the reality of this evil.
Some opponents have called for a moratorium on executions in Texas until new, unspecified safeguards are in place to protect the innocent. Yet it's difficult to imagine a fail-safe route to execution.
Besides, we already have the ultimate safeguard on the books: the sentence of life without parole. Spending the rest of one's days in prison is as terrifying a deterrent to most people as quick execution. By ending state-sanctioned killing, in the future when a jury makes a mistake, resurrection won't be required to remedy it.
[The Houston Chronicle joins other Texas newspapers like the Dallas Morning News and Austin American-Statesman in advocating for an end to the death penalty in Texas.]
The death penalty in Texas is fraught with demonstrable error, and the people of the state seem more willing to deal with that fact than their leaders.
Events of the past year have convinced us that defendants have been executed on the basis of invalid evidence. They may or may not have been guilty, but the fact that we have convicted people based on faulty evidence leads inexorably to a horrible likelihood — that we have executed innocent people. The high number of death row prisoners eventually exonerated makes a strong case that other innocent but less fortunate prisoners have been wrongfully put to death.
We don't lose sleep over the execution of guilty murderers. But the possible or probable execution of the innocent should trouble every Texan.
The freeing of Anthony Graves after 18 years in prison, many on death row, for a false murder conviction is only the most recent example of how badly the system is broken. His ordeal underlines how long the victims of wrongful death sentences must suffer in the cases where the errors are discovered before execution.
Two men, Cameron Todd Willingham, convicted of murder by arson, and Claude Jones, convicted of murder during a robbery, were executed on the basis of evidence later shown to be questionable or false.
We are heartened by figures showing that Texas and Harris County juries are sending fewer defendants to death row. Once known as the death penalty capital of the United States, Harris County has relinquished that grim title in recent years. If Texas were a nation, it would have been among the top state executioners in the world in past decades, in the company of judicial pariahs like China and Iran.
Since executions resumed in 1976, 464 have been carried out in Huntsville. Texas still led the nation in 2010 with 17 executions, more than twice the number of runner-up Ohio. This past year juries in Texas sentenced only eight people to die, while Harris County has had only two capital punishment sentences handed down.
Legal experts attribute the drop in death judgments to the availability of a life-without-parole statute passed by the Texas Legislature in 2005, and to the escalating costs to counties of the appeals process involving capital sentences. The exoneration of 11 Texas death row residents has undoubtedly made the public - and potential jury pools - more aware of the possibility that a death sentence could be an irreversible mistake.
Still, even as Texas juries show increased restraint in utilizing capital punishment, Texas elected officials - including most jurists - seem equally determined not to examine its flaws. When District Judge Kevin Fine attempted to conduct a hearing on the constitutionality of the death penalty as practiced in Texas, Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos first ordered her prosecutors to stand mute in court and then successfully appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to halt the hearing. More than 60 people, including former Texas Gov. Mark White, have filed a brief with the high court in support of allowing the death penalty hearing to go forward.
When the state Forensic Science Commission attempted to investigate whether Willingham was executed for the murder of his three children based on faulty arson evidence, Gov. Rick Perry replaced the commission chairman and several board members. A protracted and inconclusive investigation followed. An attempt by an Austin judge to conduct a hearing on the Willingham case has also been stymied by an appeals judge, who ruled that the jurist should have recused himself.
The accumulating evidence indicates that the current application of the death penalty in Texas involves an unacceptably high risk of killing innocent people. Yet even as the evidence of false convictions and wrongful executions piles up, only the participants at the base of the Texas criminal justice system, jury members, seem to be waking up to the reality of this evil.
Some opponents have called for a moratorium on executions in Texas until new, unspecified safeguards are in place to protect the innocent. Yet it's difficult to imagine a fail-safe route to execution.
Besides, we already have the ultimate safeguard on the books: the sentence of life without parole. Spending the rest of one's days in prison is as terrifying a deterrent to most people as quick execution. By ending state-sanctioned killing, in the future when a jury makes a mistake, resurrection won't be required to remedy it.
[The Houston Chronicle joins other Texas newspapers like the Dallas Morning News and Austin American-Statesman in advocating for an end to the death penalty in Texas.]
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