History > 2007 > USA > Justice > Death penalty (II)

Nine of the inmates

in the New Jersey Department of Corrections' Capital Sentencing Unit

(L-R) Top row: Marko Bey, Ambrose Harris, Jesse Timmendequas.

Middle Row: Nathaniel Henry, Sean Kenney, David Cooper.

Bottom Row: John Martini, Brian Wakefield, Donald Loftin.

Photograph:

REUTERS/New Jersey Department of Corrections/Handout

New Jersey takes step toward banning executions        R        11.5.2007

http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1046655320070511

As Execution Nears,

Last Push From Inmate’s Supporters

July 15, 2007
The New York Times
By BRENDA GOODMAN

ATLANTA, July 14 — It was a Friday night in a rough part of town when Officer Mark A. MacPhail of the Savannah Police Department showed up to work his second job, moonlighting as a security officer for the Greyhound bus station on Oglethorpe Avenue in Savannah, an area where transients were known to congregate and to drink through the early morning hours.

A few hours later, early on a Saturday morning in August 1989, Officer MacPhail was shot and killed as he tried to break up a fight over a can of beer. He never drew his weapon.

The man convicted of shooting the officer that night in 1989, Troy A. Davis, is likely to be the focus of an unusual clemency hearing before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles. On Monday, the board is to hear the case of Mr. Davis, 38, who was sentenced to death in 1991 for the killing.

Though prosecutors have considered the case solved for nearly two decades, a chorus of eyewitnesses say the police arrested the wrong man. Now, on the eve of execution, scheduled for Tuesday, they have joined his family and his lawyers in an effort to get the courts to hear new evidence they say proves he is innocent.

With no physical evidence — the murder weapon was never found — prosecutors relied heavily on the testimony of nine eyewitnesses who took the stand against Mr. Davis.

But since his trial, seven of the nine have recanted or changed their testimony, saying they were harassed and pressed by investigators to lie under oath. Other witnesses have come forward identifying a different man as the shooter.

But because of a 1996 federal law intended to streamline the legal process in death penalty cases, courts have ruled it is too late in the appeals process to introduce new evidence and, so far, have refused to hear it.

Legal experts, including William S. Sessions, a retired federal judge, a former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and a self-described supporter of the death penalty, have sounded the alarm over Mr. Davis’s case. They say it underscores the many ways the death penalty is unevenly and wrongly applied, particularly in the South, the region with the most death penalty cases.

“It would be intolerable to execute an innocent man,” Mr. Sessions wrote in an op-ed article for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “It would be equally intolerable to execute a man without his claims of innocence ever being considered by the courts or by the executive.”

Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia, is expected to testify at the clemency hearing Monday.

In addition to the hearing, lawyers for Mr. Davis asked for a new trial, but on Friday, Judge Penny Haas Freesemann of Chatham County Superior Court in Savannah denied the bid. Mr. Davis’s lawyers told The Associated Press that they would appeal to the state Supreme Court.

Mr. Davis’s older sister, Martina N. Correia, has watched her brother’s battle against a legal system she believes is biased against poor black defendants.

Georgia is one of only two states that do not guarantee defense counsel for condemned prisoners after they have exhausted their direct appeals.

“Our father worked as a sheriff’s deputy in Savannah,” said Ms. Correia, 40. “My fiancé is a police officer. We trusted that if you’re innocent, the system would work.”

“When they finally got people to tell the truth, they said it was too late to introduce it,” she said. “Some of these people, I don’t know how they sleep.”

On June 10, Ms. Correia and her mother led representatives from Amnesty International to the offices of the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles and delivered thousands of letters written in support of Mr. Davis, asking for clemency.

It is rare for the board to commute a death sentence but not unprecedented. Since 1973, the board has granted 50 clemency hearings and commuted 8 sentences.

The last was granted more than three years ago, however, and even Mr. Davis’s lawyers acknowledge that despite the outpouring of support for their client, undoing 15 years of what previous defenders have admitted was poor legal work on behalf of their client would be a long shot.

“But we believe the truth can prevail,” said Jason Ewart, a lawyer from Washington who is representing Mr. Davis.

Some of the facts of the night Officer MacPhail was killed are not in dispute.

Early on the morning of Aug. 19, 1989, a man described as a neighborhood thug, Sylvester Coles, began harassing a homeless man named Larry Young for the beer he was carrying in a paper sack.

A crowd of bystanders, some of whom had spilled out of nearby Charlie Brown’s Pool Hall after hearing the ruckus, followed the fight as it progressed up Oglethorpe Avenue toward the bus station.

Several witnesses later testified that they had heard Mr. Coles threaten Mr. Young with a gun and then saw him pull a pistol out of his pants and then use it to beat Mr. Young on the head.

Fearing for his life, Mr. Young yelled for someone to call the police, and Officer MacPhail responded. He was shot twice and died.

Mr. Davis said he had been one of the bystanders who came out of the pool hall and watched as Mr. Coles tormented Mr. Young. He said that he had run when he heard Mr. Coles threaten to shoot Mr. Young and that he had never looked back.

Mr. Davis surrendered to the Chatham County Sheriff’s Department several days later when he learned the police were looking for him, said his sister Ms. Correia. The family says it trusted that what seemed to be a case of mistaken identity would quickly be sorted out.

With no physical evidence to connect Mr. Davis to the shooting, the prosecutors relied heavily on the testimony of nine witnesses, including Mr. Coles, who identified Mr. Davis as the gunman the day after it happened, with a lawyer by his side.

Mr. Coles could not be found for comment this week.

But in an affidavit filed later, one of the witnesses, Antoine Williams, recalled his testimony that Mr. Davis was responsible for the crime.

“Even when I said that,” Mr. Williams said, “I was totally unsure whether he was the person who shot the officer. I felt pressured to point at him because he was the one who was sitting in the courtroom.”

Ms. Correia said that as the day of the execution drew near, some of the people who testified against her brother were feeling remorse.

“These witnesses, they are calling my brother and asking him to forgive them,” Ms. Correia said. “They thought if they told the truth and signed a piece of paper saying they lied before that’s all it would take. He would go free. They can’t believe he might die because they lied.”

    As Execution Nears, Last Push From Inmate’s Supporters, NYT, 15.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/15/us/15execute.html

Execution in South Dakota,
Delayed a Year by Debate on Method, Is First in 6 Decades

July 13, 2007
The New York Times
By MONICA DAVEY

By carrying out its first execution in 60 years this week, South Dakota brought an end — at least for now — to arguments about its lethal injection procedure, a debate that had delayed the execution by nearly a year.

The man put to death, Elijah Page, was pronounced dead shortly after 10 p.m. Wednesday after receiving a lethal injection at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. Mr. Page, 25, who was convicted in a beating, stabbing and torture death, had given up his appeals. When asked whether he wanted to say anything before the lethal drugs were given, Mr. Page said no, witnesses to the execution said.

South Dakota’s most recent law allowing death sentences was enacted in 1979, after the United States Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. But the state, with a small population and a relatively low crime rate, had not executed anyone since then. Four other states — New York, New Jersey, Kansas and New Hampshire — have laws allowing executions but have not carried any out since the 1976 decision. New York’s death penalty statute has not been in effect since 2004, when the state’s highest court found part of it unconstitutional.

Last August, Gov. Michael Rounds postponed Mr. Page’s execution just hours before it was scheduled to occur. At the time, Mr. Rounds, a Republican, said he was concerned about a potential conflict between the law’s description of how a lethal injection should be carried out and the state’s procedure. The law, from 1984, outlined the use of only two drugs, although most states now use three drugs in executions.

In the months since, the Legislature changed the law to allow prison officials wider discretion. Three drugs were used in the execution Wednesday, prison officials said.

Elsewhere, various elements of the lethal injection procedure are being challenged. In several states, courts have delayed executions to examine how much pain they cause, how much anesthesia should be used or how a condemned person’s degree of consciousness should be gauged.

Although Mr. Page made no effort to block his execution, South Dakota’s new protocol for execution may yet face challenges, said Richard C. Dieter, the executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a research organization that opposes capital punishment. “These regulations they have written are fairly new,” Mr. Dieter said. “They were not well vetted.”

The electric chair was used in the last execution in South Dakota, on April 8, 1947, when George Sitts was put to death for killing two law enforcement officers.

Mr. Page was convicted, along with two others, of killing Chester Poage after trying to steal from his home in Spearfish on the state’s western edge in March 2000. Mr. Poage, 19, begged for his life as his attackers made him take off his clothes and climb into a freezing creek, court records showed. He was stabbed, kicked in the head and hit with rocks. His ears were torn off.

On Wednesday, his mother, Dottie Poage, witnessed the execution. Afterward, she told reporters that Mr. Page had received the “ultimate penalty for the ultimate crime,” The Argus Leader of Sioux Falls reported.

“I’m proud to be an American,” Ms. Poage said.

    Execution in South Dakota, Delayed a Year by Debate on Method, Is First in 6 Decades, NYT, 13.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/13/us/13execute.html

South Dakota carries out 1st execution in 60 years

Thu Jul 12, 2007
12:25AM EDT
Reuters
By Todd Epp

SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota (Reuters) - South Dakota carried out its first execution in 60 years on Wednesday, putting to death a 25-year-old inmate convicted of torturing and killing a 19-year-old man following a robbery.

Officials at the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls said Elijah Page was pronounced dead at 10:11 p.m. CDT (1501 GMT on Thursday) following an injection of lethal chemicals. He had waived all appeals and said he wanted to die.

Warden Doug Weber asked Page if he had any last words and he replied, "No." Weber repeated the question and Page responded, "Yes, no last words," officials said.

It was the first execution in South Dakota since 1947 when another convicted murderer died in the electric chair.

Before Wednesday, there had been only 15 executions in the state, the first occurring in 1877 when Jack McCall was hanged for shooting Wild Bill Hickok in the back of the head as he played poker at a saloon in Deadwood when the state was still a territory.

Hickok was said to have been holding eights and aces -- poker's "dead man's hand."

Page and two other men were convicted of killing Chester Poage in 2000 after stealing a car and other property from him, forcing him to drink acid and torturing him for two hours before he died. Page pleaded guilty.

Executions are rare in South Dakota because of its sparse population. At about 780,000, it ranks 46th among the 50 states. Besides Page, there were only three other men on South Dakota's death row, including one of his co-defendants.

Page was originally scheduled to be executed a year ago but Gov. Mike Rounds ordered a halt because of a conflict between state law and prison execution protocol. The Legislature later amended the law so the execution could proceed.

It was the 1,087th execution in the United States since executions resumed in the United States in 1977.

    South Dakota carries out 1st execution in 60 years, R, 12.7.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0617465720070712

S.D. to Execute 1st Prisoner in 60 Years

July 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 5:43 a.m. ET
The New York Times

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- South Dakota is preparing for its first execution in 60 years, nearly a year after the governor delayed an execution over legal concerns about the lethal injection mixture prison officials planned to use.

Elijah Page, 25, is scheduled to be put to death next week. He has ended all appeals and asked to die for the brutal March 2000 murder of Chester Allan Poage, 19, of Spearfish.

Gov. Mike Rounds postponed Page's planned Aug. 29, 2006, execution over concerns that a 1984 state law requiring the use of a two-drug mixture in executions could put prison officials at legal risk if they instead administered a three-drug combination that has become standard in lethal injection executions.

In February, state lawmakers amended the law to allow prison officials to use whatever lethal injection mixture they choose, clearing the way for the executions of Page and the state's three other death row inmates to proceed.

Page's execution is set for the week of July 9. State law prevents the exact date and time of execution to be released until 48 hours before.

Mike Butler, Page's attorney, said the governor and the state Supreme Court chief justice have assured him that if Page wants to call off the execution even moments before to restart the appeals process, his verbal request will be honored. Butler, who plans to watch the execution, said he will not restart the appeals process unless Page directs him to.

''Truly the matter rests in Mr. Page's hands at this point,'' he said.

Butler said he has met with Page weekly but his client will not give any interviews before the execution.

Besides being the first person executed in South Dakota in 60 years, Page would be among a handful of people his age or younger put to death since capital punishment was reinstated in 1979. His case also is unusual because a judge, not a jury, imposed a death sentence -- and he has asked to die.

Page and another death row inmate, Briley Piper, 25, pleaded guilty to killing Poage in the Black Hills in 2000. A third man, Darrell Hoadley, 26, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The three killed Poage so there would be no other witness to the theft of a Chevy Blazer, stereo, television, coin collection, video game and other items from Poage's home.

As Poage begged for his life, the three men made him take off most of his clothes and forced him into an icy creek. They stabbed him repeatedly, kicked him in the head 30 to 40 times, tearing his ears off, and then bashed him with large rocks. He was also forced to drink hydrochloric acid. The torture lasted at least two hours.

South Dakota had the death penalty when it became a state in 1889 but abolished it in 1915. Capital punishment was reinstated in 1939 but abolished again from 1977 to 1979 after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled existing death penalty laws unconstitutional.

Another death penalty statute has been in place since 1979. The cases of Piper and the state's two other death row inmates, Charles Rhines and Donald Moeller, are in various stages of appeal.

In all, South Dakota has had 15 recorded executions, with the first four taking place before statehood.

    S.D. to Execute 1st Prisoner in 60 Years, NYT, 6.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-South-Dakota-Execution.html

Death Penalty Sought in Iraqi Slayings

July 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:27 p.m. ET
The New York Times

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- Federal prosecutors filed notice Tuesday that they will seek the death penalty if former soldier Steven D. Green is convicted of killing an Iraqi family and raping a 14-year-old girl.

The notice, filed in U.S. District Court, cites 12 alleged offenses related to the slayings, including that the deaths were premeditated, involved sexual abuse and were committed with a firearm.

Green, a former 101st Airborne Division soldier, was indicted Nov. 1 in the rape and murder of the girl and the slayings of three others in her family in March 2006.

    Death Penalty Sought in Iraqi Slayings, NYT, 3.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Iraq-Rape-Slaying.html

Ky. Man Could Face Death Penalty

July 3, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:54 p.m. ET
The New York Times

STANTON, Ky. (AP) -- A prosecutor said Tuesday that she will seek the death penalty for a man charged with killing a small-town eastern Kentucky police chief.

Attorneys for James Barnett entered a not guilty plea for Barnett a capital murder charge in the death of Clay City Police Chief Randy Lacy, who was fatally shot while taking Barnett to jail in a squad car June 13.

At Barnett's arraignment, Commonwealth's Attorney Lynn Herald said she plans to prosecute the slaying as a ''capital offense and seek the death penalty.''

Barnett, who was indicted June 22 on charges of capital murder, escape and theft, was escorted into the courtroom under heavy security. Several members of the Barnett and Lacy families were present, including Lacy's brother Garland Lacy, who served as the court bailiff for the proceedings.

Marcus Jones, one of Barnett's court-appointed attorneys, said he was surprised prosecutors pushed for the death penalty.

''It's supposed to be a matter of last resort,'' Jones said.

Barnett said in an interview last month with The Associated Press that he didn't remember the shooting because he was high on drugs, and that he would exchange his life for Lacy's if he could. He also didn't know how he got the gun. Officials have said Barnett's hands were cuffed in front rather than behind his back.

A coroner said Lacy was shot point-blank in the back of his head with a single bullet fired from his own gun. The car collided with a stop sign and rolled into a ditch, allowing Barnett to try to escape through a window, police said.

    Ky. Man Could Face Death Penalty, NYT, 3.7.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Police-Chief-Killed.html

Ecuadorean Sentenced to Death in Florida

June 26, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:34 p.m. ET
The New York Times

BARTOW, Fla. (AP) -- A former Ecuadorean businessman was sentenced to death Tuesday for killing four people in a business dispute, despite pleas from his native country to spare his life.

Nelson Ivan Serrano, 68, was convicted last year on four counts of first-degree murder for the Dec. 3, 1997, shootings of George Gonsalves, 69; Frank Dosso, 35; Diane Patisso, 28; and George Patisso Jr., 26.

Serrano showed no reaction as Circuit Judge Susan Roberts imposed four death sentences in a hearing that lasted only a few minutes. The sentences will automatically be appealed under Florida law.

''The state felt all along that Mr. Serrano deserved the death penalty,'' prosecutor John Aguero said. ''We feel that was an appropriate sentence.''

Serrano's attorneys declined to comment.

Serrano, Gonsalves and Dosso's father were business partners at a garment conveyor factory until a dispute over finances led to Serrano's firing as company president in 1997.

Serrano was arrested in September 2002 in his native Ecuador.

In February, Ecuador's Foreign Ministry requested Serrano be returned to that country because he was ''illegally'' taken to the United States to face charges.

Ecuador will not extradite fugitives who are facing the death penalty in other countries, but U.S. authorities were able to use Serrano's status as a U.S. citizen to get him deported in 2002. Serrano had U.S. and Ecuadorean passports when he was arrested.

Serrano denied involvement in the killings, insisting he was in Atlanta on business at the time. Defense lawyers said there was no physical evidence connecting Serrano to the slayings and no proof he was in Polk County the night of the slayings.

Prosecutors said rage over his firing drove Serrano to mastermind an elaborate plot to kill Gonsalves and leave himself with an alibi nearly 500 miles away. Dosso and the Patissos were killed because they got in the way, prosecutors said.

In October, the jury that convicted Serrano recommended 9-3 that he be sentenced to death.

    Ecuadorean Sentenced to Death in Florida, NYT, 26.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Quadruple-Slaying.html

Ruling Likely to Spur Convictions in Capital Cases

June 9, 2007
The New York Times
By ADAM LIPTAK

A decision by the Supreme Court on Monday that made it easier for prosecutors to exclude people who express reservations about the death penalty from capital juries will make the panels whiter and more conviction-prone, experts in law and psychology said this week.

The jurors who remain after people with moral objections to imposing the death penalty are weeded out, studies uniformly show, are significantly more likely to vote to find defendants guilty than jurors as a whole.

It has long been the law in every state with capital punishment that only people who are prepared to apply the death penalty may serve on capital juries. Monday’s decision, which involved a juror’s equivocation about the death penalty on learning that life without parole was an option, has the potential to make capital juries even less representative.

“It could give judges the authority to exclude about half the population from service in death penalty cases,” said Samuel R. Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan. That is because support for the death penalty drops from more than 60 percent to about half when life in prison is the alternative.

Even before Monday’s decision, a significant minority of Americans were ineligible to serve as jurors in death penalty cases. According to a poll to be released today by the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group in Washington that is critical of the death penalty as currently applied, 39 percent of Americans say they have a moral objection to the death penalty that would disqualify them from serving in a capital case. The poll’s margin of sampling error was plus or minus three percentage points.

Most of the research in this area is conducted by people and groups opposed to the death penalty. But prosecutors do not dispute the finding that capital juries are more apt to convict, arguing instead about the magnitude of the effect.

In a series of recent cases, the Supreme Court has narrowed the availability of the death penalty, barring its use on the mentally retarded and juvenile offenders, and has overturned death sentences based on flawed jury instructions, racial bias in choosing jurors and defense lawyers’ incompetence.

Some death penalty opponents found it hard to reconcile those cases with Monday’s decision on the jury selection process that lawyers call death qualification.

“We may have a line of jurisprudence that is at war with itself,” said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University. “You can’t simultaneously keep expanding the bounds of death qualification and also manifest a special concern for innocence in capital cases. As a brute matter of statistics, the farther you go in death qualification, the more wrongful convictions you will get.”

Prosecutors say that death qualification is a necessary and narrowly tailored requirement that prevents only people who are unable to follow the law from serving as jurors.

“We don’t have jury nullification in this country,” said Joshua Marquis, the district attorney in Clatsop County, Ore., and a vice president of the National District Attorneys Association. “If you have jurors who cannot look at the evidence fairly given their moral and philosophical beliefs, the state is not going to receive a fair trial.”

But Mr. Marquis conceded that the process of excluding opponents of the death penalty also conferred an advantage on prosecutors.

“I won’t deny,” he said, “that a death-qualified juror is probably more likely to be willing to look at a guilty verdict. I think that the difference is negligible.”

Robert Blecker, a professor at New York Law School who supports the death penalty, agreed that “death-qualified jurors are slightly more conviction prone” than people opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances, whom he referred to as abolitionists.

“It makes sense and is consistent with human nature that abolitionists as a class are more pro-defendant in general and less willing to convict,” Professor Blecker said. But the many safeguards in the system, he said, outweigh that slight distorting effect. “On balance, the system is, as it should be, skewed to prefer sentencing to life those who really deserve to die, rather than condemning those who deserve to live.”

Jurors eligible to serve in capital cases are “demographically unique,” said Brooke Butler, who teaches psychology at the University of South Florida. Professor Butler has interviewed more than 2,000 potential jurors over the past seven years and has written several articles on the topic.

“They tend to be white,” she said. “They tend to be male. They tend to be moderately well-educated — high school or maybe a little college. They tend to be politically conservative — Republican. They tend to be Christian — Catholic or Protestant. They tend to be middle socioeconomic status — maybe $30,000 or $40,000” in annual income.

In a study to be published in Behavioral Sciences and the Law, a peer-reviewed journal, Professor Butler made an additional finding. “Death-qualified jurors,” she said, “are more likely to be prejudiced — to be racist, sexist and homophobic.”

A 2001 study in The University of Pennsylvania Journal of Constitutional Law, drawing on interviews with 1,155 capital jurors from 340 trials in 14 states, found that race played an important role in the willingness of jurors to impose death sentences.

In cases involving black defendants and white victims, for instance, the presence of five or more white men on the jury made a 40 percentage point difference in the likelihood that a death sentence would be imposed. The presence of a single black male juror had an opposite effect, reducing the likelihood of a death sentence to 43 percent from 72 percent.

On its face, the legal standard that produces capital jurors is neutral. Prosecutors who wish to exclude jurors must demonstrate that their views on the death penalty would prevent or substantially impair their ability to follow the law. Disagreement with the death penalty as a policy matter or a reluctance to impose it is not sufficient.

“They only have to say they’re willing to consider it,” Mr. Marquis said. “I realize the recent decision fine-tuned that a bit.”

Monday’s decision, Uttecht v. Brown, reversed a decision of the federal appeals court in San Francisco and injected new flexibility into the standard for excluding jurors.

The appeals court decision, written by Judge Alex Kozinski, whose views are generally conservative, would have granted a new trial to a condemned inmate in Washington State, Cal C. Brown. Judge Kozinski wrote that one potential juror at Mr. Brown’s trial was excluded only because “he did not perhaps show the kind of bloodthirsty eagerness” to impose the death penalty “that the prosecutor may have preferred.”

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in the 5-to-4 decision on Monday, said the juror, Richard Deal, “stated six times that he could consider the death penalty or follow the law” but “these responses were interspersed with more equivocal statements.” Given that, Justice Kennedy said, the trial judge was in the best position to make the judgment about whether Mr. Deal should have been excluded.

In dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that the majority had “gotten it horribly backwards” by creating the impression that “trial courts should be encouraging the inclusion of jurors who will impose the death penalty rather than only ensuring the exclusion of those who say that, in all circumstances, they cannot.”

The decision, said David R. Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston, will have lasting consequences.

“It is a dagger through the heart of any death row inmate’s claim that he was sent to death by an unfairly selected jury,” Professor Dow said.

Opponents of the death penalty have occasionally made proposals to limit the effects of death qualification. “You could have two juries,” Professor Butler said, for instance, “one to hear guilt and one to hear sentencing.”

Prosecutors resist those ideas.

“The logistics of that are almost overwhelming,” Mr. Marquis said of Professor Butler’s proposal. “The only way to do it is to seat the two juries in the same courtroom.” Mr. Marquis said that would add needless complication and expense.

Monday’s decision revived a debate about whether the effects of death qualification are an incidental consequence of the necessary requirement that jurors agree to follow the law, or a distortion of the principle that juries reflect the overall moral sentiments of the community.

Justice William H. Rehnquist, writing for the majority in a 1986 case, said the Constitution does not bar the exclusion of groups of people based on their shared attitudes from either phase of a capital trial.

“ ‘Death qualification,’ ” Justice Rehnquist wrote, “unlike the wholesale exclusion of blacks, women or Mexican-Americans from jury service, is carefully designed to serve the state’s concededly legitimate interest in obtaining a single jury that can properly and impartially apply the law to the facts of the case at both the guilt and sentencing phases of a capital trial.”

In dissent, Justice Thurgood Marshall objected. The exclusion of jurors opposed to the death penalty, he said, “allows the state a special advantage in those prosecutions where the charges are most serious and the possible punishments the most severe.”

    Ruling Likely to Spur Convictions in Capital Cases, NYT, 9.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/09/us/09death.html?hp

4 Justices Often Side With the Condemned

June 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 3:07 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- No one on the Supreme Court publicly opposes the death penalty, but four justices often side with death row inmates who are fighting to avoid execution.

Though they are a minority on the nine-justice court, Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens win as often as they lose.

Cases involving eight death row inmates have come before the court this term. Four prisoners have won and four have lost. The most recent case was a 5-4 decision Monday to reinstate the death penalty in a rape and murder near Seattle.

In that case and the seven others, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens sided with the prisoner. In four cases, Justice Anthony Kennedy provided a fifth vote and, thus, a majority. In one of those four -- which the court dismissed without deciding -- Chief Justice John Roberts joined as well, leaving in place an appeals court ruling that set aside a death sentence.

The court has been implacably split on this issue, as on others. Roberts typically has been aligned with Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, opting to defer to the state courts that imposed and upheld death sentences.

None of the liberals has gone so far as the late Justices Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan, who called capital punishment unconstitutional, or Harry Blackmun, who said late in his tenure he never again would vote for death.

Indeed, Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens routinely deny death row appeals. That includes one on Monday from a prisoner in Kentucky who was represented by a lawyer who did not know the prisoner's real name.

But the four justices, when joined by Kennedy and, on occasion, now-retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, have been at the core of important rulings limiting the application of the death penalty.

''In the late '80s and early '90s, you were a rare defendant who won a death penalty case at the Supreme Court,'' said Richard Dieter, executive director of the anti-capital punishment Death Penalty Information Center. ''Now there's a fair chance that if you can get Justice Kennedy, you'll win.''

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, said Breyer, Ginsburg, Souter and Stevens typically ''take an expansive view of the constitutional limitations and are more prone to accept borderline arguments.''

Two years ago, Kennedy wrote the 5-4 decision outlawing the execution of juveniles. In 2002, Stevens wrote a 6-3 opinion that barred execution of the mentally retarded. Kennedy and O'Connor joined their four liberal colleagues in that case.

Both decisions focused on a national consensus that the majority said had formed against those types of executions.

Justice Antonin Scalia disputed the existence of such a consensus in his dissents in both cases. He noted that fewer than half the states that allow executions prohibited them for either juveniles or the mentally retarded. ''Words have no meaning if the views of less than 50 percent of death penalty states can constitute a national consensus,'' Scalia said in 2005.

On the other hand, 30 states at the time of those opinions either had no death penalty or barred the execution of both juveniles and the mentally retarded.

The group of 30 states could have satisfied the justices that they were not getting too far ahead of public opinion in those decisions, Dieter said.

In 1972, the Supreme Court struck down every state's death penalty law. Some justices believed at the time that this decision effectively would end capital punishment.

Instead, many states wrote new laws and four years later, the court reinstated the death penalty, a decision in which Stevens joined.

There have been 1,078 executions in the past 30 years, although the 53 carried out last year marked a 10-year low. At the start of 2007, there were 3,350 prisoners on death row across the United States, according to the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.

Polls continue to find that more than two-thirds of people in the U.S. favor the death penalty for murderers. Yet at the same time, a recent AP/Ipsos poll that asked what method of punishment people prefer for murderers found that 52 percent said death and 46 percent said life in prison or a long prison sentence.

Questions about the administration of lethal injections, doubts about the competence of some court-appointed defense lawyers and the rise in the number of exonerations through DNA evidence of people already convicted of crimes have contributed to a drop in confidence in the criminal justice system, said Robert Weisberg, a Stanford University law professor who has represented death row inmates.

Several cases that have made it to the high court have revolved around the issue of a defendant's lawyer.

''Even if this foursome is not inclined to say anything categorical about the constitutionality of the death penalty, they are very dismayed by the quality of representation in death cases,'' Weisberg said.

In a dissent from a decision last month denying Jeffrey Landrigan a new hearing to challenge his death sentence in Arizona, Stevens wrote, ''No one, not even this court, seriously contends that counsel's investigation of possible mitigating evidence was constitutionally sufficient.''

The justices also have sparred with state and federal judges in Texas over what courts must do to be fair to defendants facing death sentences. The court has overturned three sentences from Texas this term.

Since the death penalty was reinstated, Texas has executed 393 people, more than four times as many as the next state, Virginia.

The court's division over the death penalty is captured by the stark differences between the capital cases it takes from Texas and from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which encompasses California and eight other states in the West.

Three times this term, a five-justice majority reversed rulings of the San Francisco-based appeals court, saying it went too far in favor of people sentenced to death.

    4 Justices Often Side With the Condemned, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Death-Cases.html

U. of Del. Student's Killer Gets Death

June 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:17 p.m. ET
The New York Times

WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) -- A judge sentenced a man to death Wednesday for raping and strangling a University of Delaware student two years ago before torching her apartment in an attempt to destroy evidence.

The jury convicted James E. Cooke Jr. in March of first-degree murder, arson, rape, burglary and reckless endangering in the death of Lindsey M. Bonistall, whose body was found covered with charred debris in her bathtub.

Bonistall, who was white, was a 20-year-old sophomore. A handwriting analyst testified at trial that Cooke, who is black, had used a marker to write ''KKK,'' ''White Power'' and other phrases on the walls of the apartment where Bonistall lived.

Cooke, 36, also told police in a 911 call before his arrest that Bonistall's death was part of a drug war involving white supremacists.

With DNA from semen in Bonistall's body and found under her fingernails pointing to Cooke, defense attorneys had asked jurors to find him guilty but mentally ill.

Cooke, who denied he was mentally ill, was banished from the courtroom after frequent outbursts, including one in which he had to be wrestled to the floor.

    U. of Del. Student's Killer Gets Death, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-College-Student-Killed.html

Ex - Texas Sheriff's Deputy to Be Executed

June 6, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:16 a.m. ET
The New York Times

HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- Michael Griffith is about to pay with his life for violating the law he once swore to enforce.

The former Harris County sheriff's deputy was set for execution Wednesday evening for the rape, robbery and stabbing death of a Houston woman more than 12 years ago.

Griffith, one of the few former lawmen ever on death row, is the first of five convicted killers scheduled for lethal injection this month in Texas.

The slaying of Deborah McCormick, 44, came nearly two years after Griffith, who rose to the rank of sergeant over his 10-year career, was fired for violating the sheriff's department policy on domestic abuse.

McCormick was alone in her family's Houston flower shop and wedding chapel in October 1994 when she let in Griffith, a repeat customer. He asked for six long-stem roses and then pulled out a gun.

Griffith, 56, was arrested after the robbery and attack. He was found with credit cards linked to the store, as well as a knife and a receipt for the roses.

McCormick's mother, Mary Ringer, left briefly on the day of the murder. When she returned, she found her daughter's body, stabbed 11 times.

''My mother was always welcoming and very friendly,'' said McCormick's daughter, Dawn Kirkland, who planned to watch Griffith's execution. ''If anything, he hasn't spoken out at all. I would like to know why, why her of all people. Then again, I might not like the answer.''

Griffith also was convicted of committing two violent robberies in the month McCormick was killed. In one, evidence showed he shot a woman in the head during the robbery of a savings and loan office. In the other, he robbed and sexually assaulted a woman at a bridal salon. Both women survived and testified against him.

Former wives and girlfriends also testified about him abusing them. One said he became violent with her on their wedding day.

''It's amazing to see a policeman go bad like that,'' said Ira Jones, who prosecuted Griffith. ''Policemen make mistakes. They are human beings. But to go that bad, there's something seriously wrong.''

Griffith, 56, would be the 15th condemned inmate executed this year in Texas, the nation's busiest capital punishment state. He has declined to speak with reporters.

The U.S. Supreme Court in January refused to review his case and Griffith's lawyer planned no additional appeals to try to block the execution.

''I have consulted my client on this -- about filing anything on his behalf,'' James Rytting said. ''There's nothing left.''

During his trial, a medical examiner testified the knife found on Griffith was used to repeatedly stab McCormick. DNA tests tied it to the victim and to Griffith.

''The evidence against him was overwhelming,'' said David Cunningham, his trial lawyer. ''We didn't contest the issue of guilt-innocence. It was a punishment case from the start.''

A defense psychologist said Griffith had a borderline personality disorder that showed up against wives and girlfriends whose actions reminded him of growing up in Los Angeles, where his mother was described as often angry and violent when drunk.

After Griffith, scheduled to die next is Cathy Henderson, facing lethal injection June 13 for the 1994 slaying of a 3-month-old child she was baby-sitting.

Henderson has insisted the child's skull was fractured accidentally when she dropped him. His body was found 18 days after she and the child disappeared, buried in a field in a wine cooler box. She said she panicked and fled to her native Missouri.

Henderson would be the fourth woman executed in Texas since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982 and the 12th nationally since the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 allowed the death penalty to resume.

------

On the Net:

Texas execution schedule: http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/scheduledexecutions.htm

    Ex - Texas Sheriff's Deputy to Be Executed, NYT, 6.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Texas-Execution.html

Court Backs Mo. Death Penalty Procedure

June 4, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:15 p.m. ET
The New York Times

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- A federal appeals court opened the way for Missouri to resume executing inmates, ruling Monday that the state's lethal injection procedure is not cruel and unusual punishment.

The case filed on behalf of condemned killer Michael Taylor had effectively halted Missouri executions since early last year. A judge said he wanted to be sure that the three-drug injection method did not cause risk of pain and suffering.

A three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found ''no evidence to indicate that any of the last six inmates executed suffered any unnecessary pain,'' according to its ruling.

The court's decision reversed a ruling by U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. ordering reforms to Missouri's lethal injection procedures. He wanted the state to involve a doctor specializing in anesthesia, but the state has been unable to find a doctor willing to participate.

Missouri is among nine states that have put executions on hold as it grapples with whether lethal injection is inhumane.

Attorney General Jay Nixon said the decision ''reopens the necessary legal avenue for the state of Missouri to move forward on this issue.''

Margaret Phillips of the Eastern Missouri Coalition Against the Death Penalty said many questions remain unanswered and it would be unwise for the state to renew executions.

''The uncertainty of all of this is a good indication that Missouri needs a moratorium on the death penalty,'' she said.

A message seeking comment was left with the governor's office.

Taylor, convicted of killing 15-year-old Ann Harrison in Kansas City in 1989, was hours away from being put to death in February 2006 when the execution was halted. His attorney, Ginger Anders, said she would appeal Monday's ruling but declined further comment.

    Court Backs Mo. Death Penalty Procedure, NYT, 4.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Missouri-Executions.html

Jury Selection Made Easier in Death Penalty Cases

June 4, 2007
The New York Times
By DAVID STOUT

WASHINGTON, June 4 — The Supreme Court today reinstated the death sentence imposed on a Washington State rapist and murderer, and in so doing appeared to make it easier for prosecutors to select jurors who are predisposed toward capital punishment in future cases.

The 5-to-4 ruling was against Cal Coburn Brown, who robbed, raped and tortured a woman in 1991 before leaving her to die at a motel near the Seattle-Tacoma airport, and then robbed, raped and tortured another woman in Palm Springs, Calif., two days later. The California woman survived.

The court majority held that, contrary to a ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, the trial judge was justified in excusing a juror who seemed deeply confused about his own role and how the state’s death penalty law was to be applied.

Appellate courts “owe deference to the trial court, which is in a superior position to determine a potential juror’s demeanor and qualifications,” Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote for the majority. Nor does this position contradict the principle that a defendant has the right to an impartial jury “that has not been tilted in favor of capital punishment,” he wrote. Joining Justice Kennedy were Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr.

In concluding that the Ninth Circuit erred, the majority ruled that the Washington State Supreme Court was correct in finding that the juror, known only as “Juror Z,” was “substantially impaired” in his ability to carry out his duties.

Justice John Paul Stevens read a dissent from the bench — an unmistakable signal of his strong feelings about the issue — in which he asserted that the majority had chosen “to defer blindly to a state court’s erroneous characterization” of what the juror actually said.

Justice Stevens said the juror in question had made it clear that “he was in no way categorically opposed” to capital punishment, and that in any event his confusion seemed to have abated by the time he was thrown off the panel.

“Today, the court has fundamentally redefined — or maybe just misunderstood — the meaning of ‘substantially impaired,’ and, in doing so, has gotten it horribly backwards,” Justice Stevens said.

By “horribly backwards,” Justice Stevens said he meant the majority’s apparent impression “that trial courts should be encouraging the inclusion of jurors who will impose the death penalty rather than only ensuring the exclusion of those who say that, in all circumstances, they cannot.” Justice Stevens was joined by Justices David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

The defendant killed Holly Washa, 21, after abducting her in her car and driving her to the motel. He turned himself in after raping and trying to kill the California woman. He was sentenced to life in prison for the crimes he committed in California, but a jury in King County, Wash., sentenced him in death in 1993 for the crimes he committed there.

    Jury Selection Made Easier in Death Penalty Cases, NYT, 4.6.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/04/washington/04cnd-scotus.html

Convicted Murderer Is Freed

in Wake of Tainted Evidence

May 22, 2007
The New York Times
By CHERYL CAMP

OKLAHOMA CITY, May 21 — “It’s like landing on a new planet,” said Curtis E. McCarty, who was freed from death row this month after two convictions for the same murder, and 22 years in prison, 16 of them on death row.

Mr. McCarty, 44, had been scheduled to stand trial yet again on Monday for the killing in 1982 of a police officer’s daughter but was released based on a presumption of innocence after DNA evidence from earlier trials was destroyed.

“This is a real bad situation for everybody involved — for my family, for the victim’s family, for myself, for the local court system, for the people of this community,” Mr. McCarty said in a telephone interview after declining to show up Friday at a news conference at the Capitol featuring his parents and justice advocates calling for a commission to examine wrongful convictions.

“Everybody suffered,” Mr. McCarty said. “We’re supposed to be able to have faith in the system, that whether you’re the accused or the victim of a crime, you are going to be faithfully represented, that the Constitution is going to be obeyed and that there is going to be candor in the press and in the courtroom, and there’s not.”

Mr. McCarty, was convicted and sentenced to death in 1986 for the murder of 18-year-old Pamela Willis, who was raped, stabbed and strangled on Dec. 10, 1982. Citing misconduct by the prosecutor and a police laboratory analyst, the Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the verdict in 1989. Mr. McCarty was retried that year and convicted, but his death sentence was thrown out, then reinstated in 1996. In 2005, the Court of Criminal Appeals overturned his conviction because of new evidence.

Judge Twyla Mason Gray, a district judge for Oklahoma County, released Mr. McCarty on May 12, stating that evidence in the case against him had been tainted or destroyed by the actions of a former police chemist, Joyce Gilchrist, who lawyers say switched out samples to get a match. Ms. Gilchrist was fired by the police department in September 2001.

In court, Judge Gray said, “Frankly, all of the evidence that Joyce Gilchrist collected, if she inventoried it, if she stored it, if she analyzed it, I believe that it is so questionable that it is difficult to determine if it has any evidentiary value.

“My compassion in this case is not for this defendant because I believe he was involved in some way in what is so horrific,” she said.

Mr. McCarty’s case was championed by the Innocence Project, a legal clinic representing prisoners claiming wrongful convictions.

After 22 years, Mr. McCarty returned to his parents’ home in Moore, Okla., last week to a 28-year-old son, a terminally ill mother and an 8-year-old granddaughter he had never held. He was also trying to locate his daughter, whom he had not seen since she was 2 months old.

“I missed the entirety of my adult life,” he said. “I was starting just right on that cusp of maturity when they did it. I’d quit drinking and doing all the drugs. I was going to school. I had a job. And I lost it all.”

He said that leaving prison was intimidating, no matter what other prisoners had told him. “All the bravado of getting out — ‘I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that’ — it’s just that,” he said. “It’s bravado, and it’s empty. Because the reality of it is, life passed you by. People have moved on to family and careers.

“Everything they told me is true. You walk out, and it’s not exciting. It’s frightening. You’re starting at Square 1. It’s like landing on a new planet. I’m kind of just standing around befuddled.”

    Convicted Murderer Is Freed in Wake of Tainted Evidence, NYT, 22.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/us/22exonerate.html

Ariz. Executes

Inmate Who Fought Appeals

May 22, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:42 p.m. ET
The New York Times

FLORENCE, Ariz. (AP) -- A condemned killed who fought to drop his appeals, saying he owed it to his victims, was executed Tuesday by injection.

Robert Charles Comer, 50, was the first inmate put to death in Arizona since 2000. He had been convicted for a 1987 crime spree in which he killed a camper east of Phoenix and raped a woman in front of her boyfriend.

At a 2002 competency hearing, Comer admitted killing Larry Pritchard after eating a campfire dinner with the man. He said then that it was about time he paid for the crime.

''I killed Larry Pritchard. Stuck a gun in his ear and pulled the trigger, he's dead,'' Comer said, according to transcripts from the hearing. ''An eye for an eye. I mean, I ended a whole bunch of innocent people's lives and changed their lives forever. Even though they're still alive, their lives are destroyed. I owe that to them. I owe it to myself, man. I was totally wrong.''

''I don't know what everybody's so scared about,'' he added then. ''Death is not that damn bad.''

Comer fought for seven years to be executed. He spent much of that time just proving he was competent to make the decision.

At his sentencing, he had been brought into a courtroom strapped to a wheelchair, bloodied, barely conscious and naked except for a towel on his lap after struggling with guards.

In prison, he was cited 43 times between 1988 and 2001 for infractions including making knives and shanks, fighting with prisoners and guards and setting fires in his cell.

About a dozen people demonstrated against the death penalty about a mile away from the prison entrance Tuesday.

Arizona has executed 86 people, 22 of them since resuming the death penalty in 1992.

Associated Press writer Terry Tang contributed to this report.

    Ariz. Executes Inmate Who Fought Appeals, NYT, 22.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Arizona-Execution.html

Death Row Inmate in Arizona

Loses Appeal

May 14, 2007
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 10:13 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Supreme Court ruled against a death row inmate Monday who directed his lawyer not to present evidence that could spare him, then argued on appeal that the attorney was ineffective.

The court reversed a 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision granting twice-convicted killer Jeffrey Landrigan a hearing on his claim that his lawyer didn't do enough to ward off the death sentence.

The appeals court should have deferred to lower court rulings against Landrigan, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority in a 5-4 decision.

Landrigan, sentenced to death in Arizona in 1990, argued to the court that he didn't get a chance to present evidence about his tormented childhood that could have changed the outcome of his sentence.

Landrigan made it clear at trial that he didn't want his lawyer to introduce the evidence.

Landrigan escaped from an Oklahoma prison in 1989, where he was serving prison terms for a 1982 murder and a 1986 prison stabbing. After a night of drinking beer in Phoenix a month later, Landrigan killed Chester Dyer by stabbing him and strangling him with an electrical cord.

At his sentencing hearing, Landrigan repeatedly interrupted his lawyer's efforts to present evidence that showed him in a more positive light. He finally told the judge that there weren't any mitigating circumstances to share.

Afterward, however, Landrigan argued that if his lawyer had explained better, he would have agreed to present evidence that he suffered because of fetal alcohol syndrome and a history of violence in his biological family. Landrigan's father had been on death row in Arkansas until he died of natural causes in 2005.

The Arizona Supreme Court, a federal district judge and a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit all rejected Landrigan's argument. But the full appeals court reversed, saying Landrigan was entitled to a hearing on his claim that his lawyer was ineffective.

------

The case is Schriro v. Landrigan, 05-1575

    Death Row Inmate in Arizona Loses Appeal, NYT, 14.5.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Scotus-Arizona-Execution.html

New Jersey takes step

toward banning executions

Fri May 11, 2007
1:48AM EDT
reuters
By Jon Hurdle

TRENTON, New Jersey (Reuters) - New Jersey took its first legislative step on Thursday toward becoming the first U.S. state to abolish executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated them in 1976.

The state Senate's judiciary committee voted by eight to two in favor of a bill to abolish capital punishment.

If -- as predicted by some Democratic lawmakers -- the rest of the Democratic-controlled legislature approves the measure, life in prison without the possibility of parole would become the most severe punishment meted out in the state.

Twelve other states already ban the death penalty.

New Jersey's Democratic Gov. Jon Corzine is opposed to capital punishment and has said he will sign any such bill.

State Sen. Raymond Lesniak, a co-sponsor of the measure, said the death penalty legal process prolongs the suffering of murder victims' families because the appeals process in execution cases can last for decades.

"To be meaningful, justice should be swift and sure," Lesniak told the committee. "Life without parole, which begins immediately, is both of these; the death penalty is neither."

Executions are rare in New Jersey, and throughout the Northeast, where four states are already among those without the death penalty. The state last put a criminal to death in 1963, and it imposed a moratorium on executions in late 2005, pending the outcome of a study.

As of January 1, there were 11 people on death row in New Jersey, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

The study, by a special commission, recommended in January that New Jersey abolish the death penalty, saying it does not deter the worst crimes, is costlier than life imprisonment and is "inconsistent with evolving standards of decency."

Republican Sen. Gerald Cardinale, who voted against the bill on Thursday, called for the death penalty issue to be put to the voters in a referendum in November.

"Why don't we raise the standard for the imposition of the death penalty so that only those who really deserve the death penalty get it?" he said.

FAMILIES ON BOTH SIDES

Relatives of people murdered in the state spoke on both sides of the issue.

Vicki Scheiber's daughter Shannon was raped and murdered in 1998, but she told the committee she gained some relief when the killer was sentenced to life without parole less than three months after being caught.

"I can't imagine what my life would be like today if we were still waiting for his sentence to be served, or wondering if it will be carried out at all," Scheiber told the four-and-a-half hour hearing.

Sharon Hazard-Johnson, whose parents were slain in 2001, urged the panel to uphold capital punishment.

With a photograph of her parents on an easel beside her, Hazard-Johnson said the proposed legislation does not limit appeals against life in prison without parole; does not prevent the governor granting clemency, and contains no provision for murderers who kill again in prison.

Pounding the table and with a breaking voice, she said, "If we are truly concerned about killing innocent people, we will abolish this bill right here, right now."

Two days after six Muslims were charged with plotting to kill soldiers at New Jersey's Fort Dix army base, Lesniak said terrorists should not be exempt from the proposed abolition.

"Terrorists want to be martyrs. Let's not give them another reason to commit heinous acts by singling them out for the death penalty," Lesniak said.

Nationwide, the number of death sentences and actual executions has declined to its lowest point in a decade, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which that campaigns for abolition. The 38 states that have the death penalty executed 53 people in 2006, down from 98 in 1999, according to the center.

    New Jersey takes step toward banning executions, R, 11.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1046655320070511

Executed man

gets last meal wish after he dies

Thu May 10, 2007
Reuters
3:54PM EDT

NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Reuters) - A convicted murderer put to death in Tennessee this week got his last meal wish after he died.

Philip Workman had turned down the usual final meal of his choice traditionally offered the condemned, asking instead that a vegetarian pizza be given to a homeless person.

Prison officials refused to send out a pizza and Workman died on Wednesday by lethal injection.

But news accounts of his request touched a nerve with the public.

Nashville's Union Rescue Mission received 170 pizzas. Media reports said listeners to a radio station in Minnesota also ordered pizzas sent to another organization for troubled youngsters.

Dorinda Carter, spokesperson for the Tennessee Department of Correction, said, "Taxes are to be spent on specific things for the care of the inmates." But she acknowledged there was no regulation against carrying out Workman's request.

An official at the mission said "the pizzas were enjoyed greatly by our clientele."

    Executed man gets last meal wish after he dies, R, 10.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN1044267920070510

Alabama, Indiana

execute death row inmates

Fri May 4, 2007
2:41AM EDT
Reuters
By Peggy Gargis

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (Reuters) - The U.S. state of Alabama executed a death row inmate, Aaron Lee Jones, by lethal injection Thursday, the state's first execution of the year and its 36th since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.

Early on Friday, the state of Indiana executed a man who killed an elderly neighbor during a break-in 23 years ago.

Jones, 55, was convicted in 1979 of the November 10, 1978, murders of Carl and Willene Nelson in Blount County, northeast of Birmingham, during a home robbery.

Jones and an accomplice also shot and stabbed the couple's three children and the children's grandmother. The children and the grandmother survived the attacks.

Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Brian Corbett said Jones died at 7:29 EDT (1129 GMT), and that he had a pepper steak and black-eyed peas as a last meal.

"He had no last words," Corbett said, adding the lethal injection had been carried out in a routine manner from the authorities' point of view.

Lethal injection is the primary method of execution for 37 U.S. states and the federal government, although more than a dozen states have halted or suspended the procedure because of legal or ethical questions.

David Woods, who was pronounced dead at 1:35 a.m. EDT (0535 GMT) on Friday, was also executed by lethal injection, officials at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City said.

Woods, 42, was convicted in the stabbing death of 77-year-old Juan Placencia in 1984. In a final statement, Woods apologized to Placencia's family and said he felt remorse for his crime.

For his last meal, Woods had pizza with about 15 family members who came to the prison, officials said.

Woods had tried to block the execution in court, claiming he would be subjected to unwarranted pain and suffering -- an argument that others on death row have raised in a spate of challenges to lethal injection.

His was the 17th execution in the United States this year and the 1,074th since capital punishment was restored in the United States, according to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

(Additional reporting by Karen Murphy)

Alabama, Indiana execute death row inmates, R, 4.5.2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/domesticNews/idUSN0348863520070504