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February 2005

February 07, 2005:

Death Penalty : The entire Senate will debate whether the state should fix its capital punishment law or repeal it. The Judiciary Committee today forwarded two rival death penalty bills to the Senate -- without recommending whether they should pass. Members say the issue is too important to be decided in committee.

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Sanford lawmaker seeks to bring back death penalty Portsmouth Herald Mon, 07 Feb 2005 7:24 AM PST AUGUSTA, Maine - 

A Sanford lawmaker is sponsoring a bill to bring back the death penalty in domestic-violence murder cases in Maine.

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CLEVELAND -- Three separate capital murder trials are starting Monday in Cleveland. Defendants Dwight Whatley, Doyle Knox and Emmanuel Hakim are charged with aggravated murder that could result in a death penalty if they are convicted. The three cases are unrelated.

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Selection for Smuggling Death Trial Starts 

 Tyrone Williams is one of 14 people accused of taking part in the nation's deadliest human smuggling attempt. But he's the only one who is black  and he's the only one who faces the death penalty.

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SANFORD LAWMAKER WANTS TO BRING BACK DEATH PENALTY 

Republican state Senator Jonathan Courtney says it's time for the state to get tougher on domestic violence by imposing the ultimate penalty on people convicted of killing their current or former spouses or partners.

Two Charged With False Informing In Crothersville Girl's Death WRTV TheIndyChannel.com via Yahoo! News Sun, 06 Feb 2005 1:18 PM PST Police on Friday arrested a man and a 17-year-old on suspicion that they gave police false information in the investigation of a Crothersville girl's death, bringing to three the number of people arrested in the case.

Richey faces a return to Death Row The Scotsman Mon, 07 Feb 2005 6:41 AM PST KENNY RICHEY faces a return to Death Row as a result of a legal challenge by prosecutors in the United States.

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Richey faces a return to Death Row Edinburgh Evening News 

 KENNY RICHEY faces a return to Death Row as a result of a legal challenge by prosecutors in the United States. At a court hearing tomorrow, prosecutors are expected to demand a rehearing of the appeal which overturned his murder charge.

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Trucker's trial in immigrants' deaths delayed -- Houston Chronicle Mon, 07 Feb 2005 8:42 AM  

A federal appeals court today delayed for the fourth time the death-penalty trial of a truck driver accused of ignoring the suffering of over 74 immigrants stuffed in his overheated trailer, 19 of whom died.

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 PHILIPPINES: Arroyo grants 18 death row convicts 90-day reprieve

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has granted 18 death row convicts a 90-day reprieve, the chief lawyer of the Public Attorney's Office (PAO) told INQ7.net Monday.

"We are glad the President suspended the execution of these convicts so the PAO can submit evidence to acquit some of them," lawyer Persida Rueda Acosta said in a phone interview.

"This will be for the higher interest of justice," Acosta said. A list sent to INQ7.net of the convicts granted a reprieve includes Jeffrey Garcia, Juan Manalo, Alfredo Olicia, Melchor Estomaca, Alejo Masco, Romeo Santos, Camilo Soriano, Gerrico Vallejo, Rolando Pagdayawon, Arthur Pangilinan, Arnold Lopez, Reynaldo Yambot, Jaime Carpo, Oscar Ibao, Warlito Ibao, Rodney Ibao, Eddie Serdanilla, and Romeo Reyes.

Amid the rise in crime, the President lifted a moratorium on executions in December 2003. No one has been sent to the lethal injection chamber since then.

In February 2004, the Supreme Court ordered a retrial for convicted kidnappers Roderick Licayan and Roberto Lara, who were meted the death sentence.

Source: INQ7 News

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January 2005

For second year, no death row inmates executed in Louisiana

Source: ASSOCIATED PRESS

ANGOLA - For the second straight year, no death row inmates were executed
in Louisiana in 2004. Nationwide, the number of state-ordered executions fell 10 percent in 2004, continuing a five-year decline, according to figures compiled by the Death
Penalty Information Center, which opposes capital punishment. A dozen states
combined to put 59 convicts to death. The South led other regions, with more
than 85 percent of all executions.

The last execution in Louisiana was in May, 2002, when Leslie Dale Martin,
35, was killed in the death chamber at the state penitentiary at Angola for
the 1991 rape and murder of a McNeese State University student. Eighty-eight
convicts are now on death row at Angola. Six convicts began serving death sentences 
in 2004. One new arrival was serial killer suspect Derrick Todd Lee, 36.
, who was convicted this year of killing Charlotte Murray Pace and Geralyn
Barr DeSoto, and is linked to five other slayings.
Lee was sentenced to life for the DeSoto murder and death for killing Pace.
Ohio and Nevada were the only two non-Southern states to use the death
penalty in 2004. Texas topped the list by putting 23 people to death by lethal
injection, one fewer than in the previous year.

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December 2004

June  2002

Mon Jun 24
By The Associated Press

Excerpts from the Supreme Court's death penalty decision:

"Capital defendants, no less than non-capital defendants, we conclude, are entitled to a jury determination of any fact on which the legislature conditions an increase in their maximum punishment." — Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ( news - web sites), writing for the court.
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The Court has failed ... to offer any meaningful justification for deviating from years of cases both suggesting and holding that application of the "increase in the maximum penalty" rule is not required by the Constitution." — Justice Sandra Day O'Connor ( news - web sites), dissenting.
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"Apart from the Eighth Amendment provenance of aggravating factors, Arizona presents no specific reason for excepting capital defendants from the constitutional protections ... extended to defendants generally, and none is readily apparent." — Ginsburg.
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"The right to trial by jury guaranteed by the Sixth Amendment would be senselessly diminished if it encompassed the factfinding necessary to increase a defendant's sentence by two years, but not the factfinding necessary to put him to death. We hold that the Sixth Amendment applies to both." — Ginsburg.
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"The notion that the Eighth Amendment's restriction on a state legislature's ability to define capital crimes should be compensated for by permitting states more leeway under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments in proving an aggravating fact necessary to a capital sentence ... is without precedent in our constitutional jurisprudence.'" — Ginsburg.
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"The Court effectively declares five states' capital sentencing schemes unconstitutional. ... There are 168 prisoners on death row in these states ... each of whom is now likely to challenge his or her death sentence." — O'Connor.
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"I believe many of these challenges will ultimately be unsuccessful, either because the prisoners will be unable to satisfy the standards of harmless error or plain error review, or because, having completed their direct appeals, they will be barred from taking advantage of today's holding on federal collateral review." — O'Connor.
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"Nonetheless, the need to evaluate these claims will greatly burden the courts in these five States. In addition, I fear that the prisoners on death row in Alabama, Delaware, Florida and Indiana, which the court identifies as having hybrid sentencing schemes in which the jury renders an advisory verdict but the judge makes the ultimate sentencing determination ... may also seize on today's decision to challenge their sentences. There are 529 prisoners on death row in these states. — O'Connor.
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"Based solely on the jury's verdict finding (plaintiff) Ring guilty of first-degree felony murder, the maximum punishment he could have received was life imprisonment. ... This was so because, in Arizona, a death sentence may not legally be imposed ... unless at least one aggravating factor is found to exist beyond a reasonable doubt." — Ginsburg.
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"The question presented is whether that aggravating factor may be found by the judge, as Arizona law specifies, or whether the Sixth Amendment's jury trial guarantee, made applicable to the states by the Fourteenth Amendment, requires that the aggravating factor determination be entrusted to the jury. — Ginsburg.
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"Arizona suggests that judicial authority over the finding of aggravating factors 'may ... be a better way to guarantee against the arbitrary imposition of the death penalty.' ... The Sixth Amendment jury trial right, however, does not turn on the relative rationality, fairness, or efficiency of potential fact-finders." — Ginsburg.

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May 28

TEXAS---juvenile execution
Beazley executed for crime committed at 17

Napoleon Beazley, whose death sentence for killing the father of a federal judge during a 1994 carjacking at 17 stirred national debate over capital punishment for youths, was executed Tuesday evening. Beazley, now 25, had repeatedly expressed remorse for shooting John Luttig, 63, while trying to steal the man's Mercedes. 

When asked by the warden if he had a final statement to make Tuesday night, Beazley turned and looked toward Suzanne Luttig, the victim's daughter, pausing for several seconds before saying "no." He shook his head and said "no" again. Then Beazley turned his head and closed his eyes. As the lethal drugs began to take effect, Beazley coughed 4 times, gasped and sputtered as his head bounced against the gurney pillow.
He was pronounced dead at 6:17 p.m., 9 minutes after the drugs began to take effect.

Beazley was high school class president, star athlete and college material in his small East Texas hometown, but he also was known to some in Grapeland as a drug peddler who carried a pistol and told some friends he'd soon be driving a Mercedes. "Napoleon Beazley's case unfortunately typifies the endemic ills of the U.S. death penalty system," said William F. Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, which opposes capital punishment in all cases. "This case adds another important factor: the defendant was a child when this crime occurred."

According to Texas law, Beazley was not a child.
Texas is among 5 states that allow the death penalty for 17-year-olds. Another 17 states allow capital punishment for 16-year-olds. In Texas, Beazley was among 29 death row inmates who were under 18 at the time of their crime. His was the 11th prisoner in the state and the 19th in the United States to be put to death since 1976 for a murder committed
when the killer was younger than 18.

Last month, in a tearful statement in a Tyler courtroom where he received his execution date, he apologized again for the crime. "It's my fault," he said. "I violated the law. I violated this city, and I violated a family - all to satisfy my own misguided emotions. I'm sorry. I wish I had a 2nd chance to make up for it, but I don't."

Less than two hours before his execution, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal and a request to halt the punishment. Gov. Rick Perry issued a statement shortly before the execution denying Beazley's request for a 30-day reprieve.

Earlier in the day, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles refused Tuesday by 10-7 vote to commute his death sentence to a life prison term. The board also rejected 13-4 a request to stop the punishment from 120 to 480 days.

Beazley becomes the 14th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas and the 270th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982.
Beazley also becomes the 30th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 779th overall since America resumed executions on January 17, 1977.
Texas as 11 more confirmed execution dates through mid-September, including 2 for juvenile offenders.

(sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin)

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Christopher Simmons execution stayed by Missouri Supreme Court
By David Scott, Associated Press Writer

05/28/2002 

ST. LOUIS (AP) -- The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday halted the pending execution of Christopher Simmons, issuing a stay until the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a Virginia case expected to decide the legality of executing the mentally retarded.

The one-sentence order granting the stay comes a little more than a week before Simmons, 26, was scheduled to die by injection at the Potosi Correctional Center. The state Supreme Court had already pushed back the execution once, without explanation and apparently without prompting, moving it from early May to June 5.

Death penalty opponents have lobbied especially hard against executing Simmons, who was 17, a juvenile, when he pushed a suburban St. Louis woman from a bridge after robbing her home in 1993.

It was not immediately clear why the state court would wait for the decision in Atkins v. Virginia, which was argued before the federal Supreme Court in February. That case involves convicted Virginia killer Daryl Renard Atkins, who has an IQ of 59, and the question of whether executing the mentally retarded violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Since reinstating the death penalty in 1977, Missouri has sent four people
to death row who were younger than 18 when they committed their crimes. Only one, Fredrick Lashley, has been executed. He was put to death in 1993 for a murder 11 years earlier, when he was 17.

It is believed that just four other countries execute those younger than 18 at the time of the crime: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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Wed May 22: Prime minister says Hungary should consider reinstatement of death penalty

By PABLO GORONDI Associated Press Writer

BUDAPEST, Hungary - Citing a bank robbery in which eight people were killed, outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orban on Wednesday called on the future government to consider reintroduction of the death penalty.

Orban said he changed his mind about opposing the death penalty - banned here since 1990 - when he met with relatives of those killed in the May 9 bank robbery, Hungary's most violent crime in recent memory.

Two robbers targeting a branch of Austrian Erste Bank in Mor, a small town 65 kilometers (45 miles) southwest of Budapest, killed everyone inside and left with 7.4 million forints (dlrs 27,400). The robbers remain at large.

"After what happened, our place should be among those European countries which say that applying the death penalty should again be a decision left to the jurisdiction of each country," Orban said in an interview broadcast Wednesday on state radio.

Orban acknowledged that reinstating the death penalty would keep Hungary outside the European Union (news - web sites), which bans the penalty, but added that the EU could also change its position.  Orban's four-year term ends when the new government is formed, probably next week. The new government, elected in April, is to be led by designated Prime Minister Peter Medgyessy and will mostly include ministers from the Socialist Party and the Alliance of Free Democrats.

Orban's comments were qualified as "outrageously irresponsible behavior" by Peter Barandy, the incoming government's nominee for justice minister.

Speaking at his confirmation hearing in parliament, Barandy said the "world is heading in another direction," not toward reinstating the death penalty.

A comment like Orban's calling for the return of the death penalty, "could itself jeopardize Hungary's European Union accession," Barandy said.

(pg/gj)

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May 11. 02

Maryland 2nd State to Ban Executions

Saying he supports the death penalty but wants to make sure it's fairly applied, Gov. Parris Glendening has banned executions during his final eight months in office, making Maryland the second state with such a moratorium.

(Source:Associated Press)

April 2002:

LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) - Alton Coleman, who was sentenced to death in three states for a 1984 crime spree, was executed by injection Friday.

As witnesses watched in person and on closed circuit television, Coleman, 46, was put to death at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility  for beating Marlene Walters to death in her home in the Cincinnati  suburb of Norwood.

The time of death was 10:13 a.m., said Joe Case, a spokesman for Attorney General Betty Montgomery (news, bio, voting record).

Coleman was the only person currently under a death sentence in three states: Ohio, Illinois and Indiana.

He was suspected in as many as eight deaths, plus numerous robberies, rapes and kidnappings during the five-state spree with his girlfriend, Debra Denise Brown.

Because of the number of victims, Ohio prison officials decided for the first time to broadcast an execution via closed circuit to another prison room to accommodate additional witnesses.

Coleman's lawyers say he was abused as a child and his brain was affected by his mother use of drugs and alcohol while pregnant. Police  and prosecutors, though, saw Coleman as a charismatic man who charmed  his way into his victims' lives.

Coleman fought his execution through state and federal appeals courts and the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites), arguing that he had ineffective counsel in the Walters' trial and that the state should not be allowed to telecast the execution.

Gov. Bob Taft denied clemency, as he did in Ohio's three previous executions.

Coleman also received the death penalty for strangling Vernita Wheat, 9, whose body was found in his hometown of Waukegan, Ill., and for stomping and strangling 7-year-old Tamika Turks of Gary, Ind.

EXECUTION   IS   NOT   THE  SOLUTION   ! ! !