Kill the Death Penalty

[Wakeforest22890]

As I've said before these method of execution claims are last gasp efforts after all other appeals have been exhausted. I think the focus is on the cocktails used because A) states keep fucking up and B) if there is a procedure set out for killing people as a state you should likely follow it

I don't really see this as a valid comparison to abortion and the tactics used.

 

[avalon]

Revenge Killing: Race and the death penalty in a Louisiana parish

Dale Cox appeared on 60 Minutes last night in a piece about a guy wrongly convicted and sent to death row.

30 Years on Death Row

About the case:

Stroud now admits the cards and the system were stacked against Ford from the beginning: his court-appointed lawyers had never practiced criminal law.

Bill Whitaker: What kind of law did they practice?

Marty Stroud: One individual had general civil practice, and another one did succession, wills and estates.
…

Marty Stroud: There were no African Americans on the jury.

Bill Whitaker: Was that by design?

Marty Stroud: At the time of the case, we excluded African Americans because we-- I felt that they would not consider a death penalty where you had a black defendant and a white victim. I was the person that made the final call on the case with respect to jurors. And I was-- I was wrong.

Dale Cox:

Dale Cox: I don't know what it is he's apologizing for. I think he's wrong in that the system did not fail Mr. Ford.

Bill Whitaker: It did not?

Dale Cox: It did not...in fact...

Bill Whitaker: How can you say that?

Dale Cox: Because he's not on death row. And that's how I can say it.

Bill Whitaker: Getting out of prison after 30 years is justice?

Dale Cox: Well, it's better than dying there and it's better than being executed----

There may be no more controversial prosecutor in the U.S. than Dale Cox. Between 2010 and 2014, his Caddo Parish office put more people on death row per capita than anywhere else in the country.

Dale Cox: I think society should be employing the death penalty more rather than less.

 

[ONW]

Dale Cox appeared on 60 Minutes last night in a piece about a guy wrongly convicted and sent to death row.

30 Years on Death Row

About the case:

Watched this, couldn't believe his amount of cognitive dissonance, and every case he was involved with should be re-visited by a third party.

 

[avalon]

Pfizer’s move throws a wrench into America’s death-penalty machinery

Last week, Pfizer, one of America’s largest drug companies, announced that it would no longer supply prisons with seven drugs used to impose the death penalty. “Pfizer’s mission is to apply science and our global resources to improve health and well-being at every stage of life”, the statement says. “Consistent with these values, Pfizer strongly objects to the use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment.” The firm will sell the drugs “only for medically prescribed patient care and not for any penal purposes”, and take pains to ensure that the “select group of wholesalers, distributors and direct purchasers” who buy these drugs—pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride, propofol, midazolam, hydromorphone, rocuronium bromide and vecuronium bromide—“will not resell these products to correctional institutions”.

 

[avalon]

America's deadliest prosecutors: five lawyers, 440 death sentences

What they all had in common was a vast appetite for putting men and women to death. What additionally made them special was that they all had the power to turn such unusual tastes into sentences.

As head prosecutors in their counties, just five individuals have been responsible for putting no fewer than 440 prisoners onto death row. If you compare that number to the 2,943 who are currently awaiting execution in the US, it is equivalent to one out of every seven.

Or express the figure another way: of the 8,038 death sentences handed down since the death penalty was restarted in the modern era 40 years ago this week, some one in 20 of them have been the responsibility of those five district attorneys alone.

That might have presented an ethical burden to some, but not to Macy. As he sat beneath his Tombstone poster, he ruminated on the “patriotic duty” of prosecutors to aggressively pursue death sentences. He was proud of having sent a 16-year-old, Sean Sellers, to the death chamber before the US supreme court banned the execution of juveniles in 2005.

The problem is that Macy’s sense of legal propriety was not as honed as his sense of patriotic duty. The Harvard report notes that about a third of the 54 capital sentences he secured were later challenged and misconduct uncovered; three death-row prisoners were exonerated.

Johnny Holmes was the top prosecutor in Harris County, Texas, which covers Houston. During his 21 years in charge until his retirement in 2000, 201 people were sent to death row.

As the Harvard team points out, as soon as Holmes retired, the number of death sentences secured in Harris County plummeted from an average of 12 a year during his heyday to just one a year now. That suggests that capital punishment in America is what the authors call a “personality-driven system”.

 

[RJKarl]

Avalon, you should look up all the mess that's happening in the Orange county, CA DA's office. It may be the must dishonest and corrupt office of any major country in the country. There are so many issues and such corruption that I can't believe the DOJ hasn't taken it over.

Although I agree with about the DP, the DA illegally used a snitch on the easiest DP case in the past 30-50 years. A guy walked into a lady's beauty salon in Seal Beach and gunned down eight people (I'm pretty sure that's the number) in broad daylight. There is no doubt he did it, but because of the DA's actions the guy probably won't get the DP.

Luckily, we have the OC Weekly and others looking into the DA. Many other cities, towns and counties don't and too many innocent people are convicted. Some are even convicted and sentenced to death.

 

[Wakeforest22890]

SCOTUS denies cert. in another death penalty case. https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/022117zor_o759.pdf

This time on appeal from the 11th Circuit down in Alabama. Sotomayor wrote a dissent which touches on several interesting aspects of the current requirements of arguing that capital punishment is cruel and unusual. Under the combination of a couple recent decisions in the "means of execution" arena (generally raised once all substantive appeals about guilt have been exhausted), a petitioner seeking to argue against a specific type of execution (generally lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment) must show that there is another known and available alternative to the method chosen by the state. This is particularly interesting in the current climate where it is difficult, if not impossible, for states to acquire the drugs used in lethal injections due to European manufacturer's refusal to sell these drugs to states that are going to use them to execute people.

A recent SCOTUS decision, Baze v. Rees, held that if a state refuses to adopt legislatively the petitioner's proffered viable alternative to the current method (again, in this instance lethal injection) then this refusal could be viewed as an 8th Amendment violation. In this specific case the petitioner proposed death by firing squad as an alternative but the District Court in Alabama held that execution by firing squad was not permitted by state statute and therefore did not constitute a "feasible or readily implemented" method of execution. The 11th Circuit affirmed this determination and denied any stay of the execution.

Sotomayor says that the District Court's ruling and the 11th Circuit's affirmation now shows that a state can execute someone through an unconstitutional method simply by passing a statute declining to authorize any alternative method. She uses pretty strong language condemning these decisions, calling it "an alarming misreading of Baze" and that the decisions turn the language of Baze on its head by holding that if the state refuses to adopt the proffered alternative legislatively then the inquiry merely ends.

I suspect that at some point another case will reach the SCOTUS level where there's a clarification. Full disclosure, I've previously been involved in research/legal defense related to this issue (in the context of another inmate sentenced to death going through this "method of execution" challenge in a southern state, but not the specific petitioner in this case, Tommy Arthur).

 

[MysteryMen]

Eleventh Circuit seems clearly wrong in holding that prisoners can only point to methods authorized by the state in making the Glossip showing. But there were enough other things going on in this case that I can see why they didn't grant cert. There were three independent grounds for the CA11 decision I think

 

[Wakeforest22890]

Eleventh Circuit seems clearly wrong in holding that prisoners can only point to methods authorized by the state in making the Glossip showing. But there were enough other things going on in this case that I can see why they didn't grant cert. There were three independent grounds for the CA11 decision I think

Yeah, of the Alabama cases that are all in this group, the Arthur case is the most interesting - worth reading the history if you have some time and are interested.

Another intriguing layer in these cases are the petitioner and their attorneys are tasked with arguing for an alternative method of execution, which if accepted by the state, would essentially condemn themselves to death. This hasn't happened in practice as far as I can tell, but there's something unsettling about forcing a petitioner to pick his own method of death in 2017 just in order to satisfy a step in a plurality SCOTUS decision.

ETA: Also having spent a substantial amount of time reading through Alabama law on executions, Sotomayor's argument in a footnote that it isn't clear to her why firing squad would not be permissible under state law, is spot on IMO. In order to avoid other types of challenges after seeing the legal landscape on lethal injection/execution shifting, the state expressly provided that if lethal injection or the preferred method from the state is ruled unconstitutional, the state may use other means to effectuate the death sentence. So, it's not clear at all why the District Court or 11th Circuit would find that firing squad was barred by statute when it plainly isn't.

 

[MysteryMen]

The controversy over Midazolam is interesting. I heard a anesthesiologist who's a death penalty expert speak last week (he often is an expert witness for prisoners challenging their method of execution), and he said a single drug lethal injection of a drug like Midazolam is the most humane method of execution (it's the same way we put dogs/cats, etc. to sleep). In contrast, the three-drug cocktail poses a significant risk that due to the paralytic, the prisoner is experiencing extreme pain that nobody can discern.

He said the biggest problem with botched executions (including with Midazolam) is that many states have prison staff performing executions rather than doctors. It was his opinion that if all states had anesthesiologists with medical degrees administer drugs like Midazolam, we would have very few botched executions (and this is from a guy who is often a defense witness)

 

[WakeForestRanger]

 

[avalon]

Arkansas Readies For 8 Executions, Despite Outcry Over Pace, Method

High score!

Still trying:

Arkansas Pushes To Carry Out Executions, Fighting Court Rulings And The Clock

If the rulings are overturned by Monday night, the state will be prepared to execute at least one inmate, according to local TV station KATV.

KATV, citing anonymous officials, reports that death row inmate Don Davis has been transferred to the unit where the state's Department of Correction was preparing to carry out executions.

"Davis' exact schedule for the day is confidential but as part of the death protocol, he will be meeting with counsel and a spiritual adviser," KATV reports. "Authorities say a last meal has also been arranged."

 

[avalon]

Arkansas killed Ledell Lee last night. The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to let the execution proceed.

24 years later, Ledell Lee maintained his innocence in death of Debra Reese

On February 9, 1993, 26-year-old Debra Reese was sexually assaulted and murdered in her own home. She was struck approximately 36 times with a tire thumper, a tool used by truck drivers to check their tire pressure. Her husband was a truck driver and had given her the tire thumper as a means of protection while he was on the road.

An hour after the murder, Jacksonville police arrested Ledell Lee in connection with Reese’s murder after witnesses claimed they saw him walking down the street that Reese’s house was on. After his arrest and even after his conviction, Lee reiterated his innocence.

The ACLU asked for new post-conviction DNA testing in the case, and claimed that Lee’s intellectual disability stemming from fetal alcohol syndrome was “never noticed let alone brought to the court or the jury’s attention.” They asked that the court allow new DNA testing of a hair found at the scene and a drop of blood found on Lee’s shoe. Originally, the state’s experts said at the trial that the hairs matched Lee’s through microscopic examination. But both the ACLU and Innocence Project say that “forensic method” has now been discredited as non-factual and un-scientific.

“The testing available then wasn’t sophisticated enough for fragmented samples,” ACLU said in a statement, “and no other DNA evidence was found to tie him to the crime.”

However, Pulaski County Circuit Court Judge Herbert Wright denied the motion, saying that even if the court allowed the testing and it proved neither the hair nor the blood tied Lee to the crime, “there would still be sufficient proof presented by the state at trial for the jury to reach a guilty verdict.”

 

[Louis Gossett Jr]

Don't worry the forensic evidence will become even more scientific and accurate over the next few years because Sessions wants to promote proper evidence based science, nope!

 

[TuffaloDeac10]

Neil "pro-life" Gorsuch's first vote was... for death

 

[MysteryMen]

These Arkansas executions are really ridiculous, especially for the reason that Justice Sotomayor flagged. District court held extensive hearings, issued 100-page opinion saying Arkansas execution method was inhumane. That's supposed to get deference under Supreme Court precedent. And then the Eighth Circuit overturns it pretty much summarily and SCOTUS does nothing.