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Execution set for July 14 would be the 6th in Georgia this year

Georgia USA Execution set for July 14 would be the 6th in Georgia this year

John Wayne Conner Conner was sentenced to die 34 years ago John Wayne Conner was scheduled Friday to become the sixth man executed in Georgi...

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U.S. Supreme Court Reverses Another Alabama Death Penalty Case

06.11 Unknown 0

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEmO7Sxl9DNil3OtfIhNzbcg4CS9MmIbPlCY081Za6toTAUDsYKD5Q6FttSoPxVp_51615DOufWFIcLGpNpVHL61I_6HPzHKLWngEf2t-Pcd1avkqpWBc-hg_l1RDk9H83OCrLpE8Aouc/s1600/welcome-alabama.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="214" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEmO7Sxl9DNil3OtfIhNzbcg4CS9MmIbPlCY081Za6toTAUDsYKD5Q6FttSoPxVp_51615DOufWFIcLGpNpVHL61I_6HPzHKLWngEf2t-Pcd1avkqpWBc-hg_l1RDk9H83OCrLpE8Aouc/s320/welcome-alabama.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For the 4th time in 2 months, the United States Supreme Court today overturned an Alabama death penalty case in which EJI challenged the conviction and sentence affirmed by state courts. This time, the Court reversed because of concerns about racial bias in jury selection.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Christopher Floyd was tried by an all-white jury in Houston County, Alabama, where African Americans comprise 27 % of the population. The prosecutor, Doug Valeska, has a documented history of racial discrimination in jury selection. The prosecution marked African American potential jurors with a "B" on its list of jurors to remove, then removed 10 of 11 qualified black prospective jurors.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">1 of the black jurors barred from jury service provided answers to all of the prosecution's questions during jury selection, but the prosecutor said that she did not respond to any questions and so he could not provide a race-neutral reason for removing her. EJI argued on appeal that because the prosecutor's assertion was not true, relief was required. The state courts nonetheless refused to grant relief.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Supreme Court today granted Mr. Floyd's request for review, reversed the state court decision, and ordered the state court to re-examine the case. The Court referred to its recent decision in <i>Foster v. Chatman</i>, in which it held that Georgia prosecutors illegally barred African Americans from serving on Mr. Foster's jury because of their race.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Racial bias has been a longstanding problem in Alabama, where more than 2 dozen cases have been reversed after courts found that prosecutors engaged in intentional racial discrimination during jury selection. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Equal Justice Initiative has long argued that racial bias in jury selection is a serious problem in Alabama, particularly in capital trials, where too few prosecutors have ended the practice of unfairly excluding African Americans.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: Equal Justice Initiative, June 21, 2016</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">SCOTUS demands new look at race of jurors of death penalty conviction in Alabama</span></b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The U.S. Supreme Court says lower courts in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi must re-examine 3 death penalty convictions for evidence of racial prejudice in jury selection.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The court ruled Monday in the cases of Christopher Floyd of Alabama, Jabari Williams of Louisiana and Curtis Giovanni Flowers of Mississippi.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The brief decisions followed the court's May decision to overturn the conviction and death sentence of a Georgia man because of evidence that prosecutors intentionally excluded black people from the jury.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The May decision broke no new ground in efforts to fight racial discrimination in jury selection, but underscored a 30-year-old high court ruling that took aim at the exclusion of minorities from juries.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Flowers was convicted after 5 previous trials over the slaying of 4 people in a furniture store.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: Associated Press, June 21, 2016</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /><br /><b><span style="font-size: large;">US Supreme Court orders Curtis Flowers Hearing</span></b><br /><br />The US Supreme Court orders Mississippi to re-examine Curtis Flowers death penalty conviction for evidence of racial prejudice in jury selection.<br /><br />Curtis Flowers has been on death row in the 1996 killing of Winona furniture store owner Bertha Tardy and 3 of her employees. The US Supreme Court threw out today the Mississippi high court's 2014 decision affirming Flowers conviction and death sentence and told the court to look again at Flowers' claim that African American jurors were excluded from his last trial in 2010 for racial reasons.<br /><br />The decision didn't throw out Flowers conviction and death sentence but ordered the State Supreme Court to re-examine whether African American jurors were purposely excluded from serving on Flowers trial which could win Flowers a new trial.<br /><br />Source: Delta News, June 21, 2016<br /><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">- Report an error, an omission:<a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com" target="_blank"> deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a></span> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span> <span style="font-size: small;"> - Follow us on <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank">Facebook</a> </b>and <b><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank">Twitter</a></b></span></div></div>

For the 4th time in 2 months, the United States Supreme Court today overturned an Alabama death penalty case in which EJI challenged the con...

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Georgia executions rise, while death sentences plummet

03.22 Unknown 0

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZT7r0tI_CoteKE4ISeLaPSO51cJVn-PH33GvjewtfqvjQ989vuJOcBt9aa3hzoi3Pim78vESXck0GU7c5FgW_72D_ByoUjtJ6u08QUAIW2WhJQAqa67yIwLVr6XuRWlFM80mA7Np-Xpw/s1600/Georgia+death+chamber.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Georgia's death chamber" border="0" height="280" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZT7r0tI_CoteKE4ISeLaPSO51cJVn-PH33GvjewtfqvjQ989vuJOcBt9aa3hzoi3Pim78vESXck0GU7c5FgW_72D_ByoUjtJ6u08QUAIW2WhJQAqa67yIwLVr6XuRWlFM80mA7Np-Xpw/s400/Georgia+death+chamber.jpg" title="Georgia's death chamber" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Georgia's death chamber</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">It's Georgia's new death penalty paradox: the state is executing inmates at a record clip, but prosecutors almost never seek the death penalty anymore, and juries refuse to impose it when they do.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">During each of the past 2 years, Georgia executed 5 inmates. If, as expected, the state carries out another execution later this year, it will have put more people to death - 6 - in 2016 than in any single year since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment 4 decades ago.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But the last time a Georgia jury imposed a death sentence was in March 2014. And district attorneys have been turning away from death as a sentencing option, more often allowing killers to receive sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A decade ago, state prosecutors filed notices of intent to seek the death penalty against 34 accused killers. That number dropped to 26 in 2011 and to 13 last year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">How many times have Georgia DAs sought the death penalty so far this year? Once. And this was against a man accused of killing a priest - a clergyman who had signed a document saying if he died a violent death he did not want his killer to face the death penalty.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The incongruity of the increasing numbers of executions and the plummeting numbers of death sentences took both prosecutors and defense attorneys by surprise.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Wow," Atlanta criminal defense attorney Akil Secret said. "Maybe the times are changing."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The precipitous declines raise the question of whether prior capital sentences were justified, Secret said. "If a life-without-parole sentence is sufficient for today's worst crimes, why isn't it sufficient for those crimes from the past where death was imposed?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In March, Secret represented 1 of the only 2 defendants to face death-penalty trials in Georgia this year. In both cases, juries in Fulton and Newton counties unanimously voted for sentences of life without parole.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter also expressed surprise at the ongoing trends.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It's certainly one of those odd occurrences," said Porter, who has three pending capital cases. "But part of me says these (current) executions were cases where the sentences should have been carried out long ago. Also, the option of life without parole was never an option for them. It's almost apples and oranges."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Asked whether he thought cases that received death sentences in the past should now be reconsidered for life without parole, Porter quoted a passage from the "Dune" science fiction series, "If wishes were fishes, we'd all cast nets."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Is the death penalty no longer necessary?</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Brian Kammer, head of a nonprofit agency that represents condemned killers through their final appeals, said many inmates would not have been sent to death row had they been represented by competent lawyers. Today, he said, the state has a dedicated office with highly trained public defenders with the resources to thoroughly investigate their clients' backgrounds.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Had such legal teams with adequate resources been available to these recently executed prisoners at the time they were tried originally, I am confident they would be alive today," Kammer said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court used a Georgia case to abolish capital punishment. In 1976, in another Georgia case, the high court reinstated the death penalty. Since that ruling, Georgia has executed 65 condemned killers. There are now 63 inmates on death row.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There is a consensus among state prosecutors and defense attorneys as to why the death penalty is not being sought as frequently as it was in the past and why juries are reluctant to impose it. 7 years ago, state lawmakers unanimously voted to allow prosecutors to obtain a life-without-parole sentence without having to file a notice to seek the death penalty.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It has made an enormous difference," said Chuck Spahos, head of the Prosecuting Attorneys' Council of Georgia. "When you start talking about the expense, the years of appeals and the length of the process that goes on and on and having to put victims' families through that with no closure, the availability of life without parole with a guilty plea has become an attractive option."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Years ago, some state prosecutors sought the death penalty because all they really wanted to do was send a defendant to prison for the rest of his or her life, said Jerry Word, head of Georgia's Capital Defender Office. "Now they no longer have to seek death to get what they really want. And the polls show that the public is becoming much more comfortable with life without parole."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>'We've lost our sense of outrage'</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Doug Pullen, who made a name for himself obtaining death sentences as a Columbus district attorney in the early 1990s, said he believes society has become desensitized to violence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We've lost our sense of outrage at such things," said Pullen, who later served as a judge until he resigned amid an ethics probe. "For me personally, and I think for a large portion of my age group, it's just absolutely appalling."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A defense attorney once told him that the death penalty would become so expensive and time-consuming it would die a natural death, Pullen said. "I guess I knew it was coming, but that it got here this fast kind of surprises me."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Not only are death sentences rare, death sentences once routinely imposed for certain types of murders have become nonexistent.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Lawyers representing Brandon Astor Jones tried unsuccessfully to stop his execution in February. In 1979, Jones was sentenced to death for killing the manager of a Cobb County convenience store during an armed robbery. But death sentences for these kinds of armed robbery cases have not been imposed in Georgia in the past 20 years, an appeal filed on Jones' behalf said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Layla Zon, the district attorney for Newton and Walton counties, said after she took office in 2010 she reviewed cases in which death sentences were obtained by her predecessors more than a decade ago. "You'd never get the death penalty in most of those cases today," she said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"To me, it seems like a gunshot killing of a single victim is not going to rise to the level in jurors' minds of what it takes to impose a death sentence," Zon said. "Torture, depravity of mind, the killing of a child. That's what it takes."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A recent motion filed on behalf of Rodney Young, sentenced to death in Newton County in 2012 for killing his ex-fiancee's son, accused Zon of being "pathologically enthralled" with the death penalty. It said she has sought death at a rate unmatched by any other district attorney in Georgia and noted she had a battery-powered toy electric chair, called "Death-Row Marv," in her office.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Zon, who said the toy was in her office when she became DA and that she has since removed it, said she seeks death in cases that warrant it. Since 2011, there have been 13 death-penalty trials in Georgia, with 4 taking place in Newton. Zon's office also obtained 2 of the state's 5 death sentences during that time.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Last month, Ashley Wright, district attorney of the Augusta Judicial Circuit, filed the first and only notice to seek death so far this year. She is seeking it against Steven James Murray, who is accused of kidnapping Catholic priest Rene Robert, forcing him into the trunk of his car and then driving him to Burke County, where he shot and killed him.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After the notice was filed, Wright said, Robert's Catholic diocese in St. Augustine, Fla., sent her a document that Robert had signed years ago. The document said that in the event he died a violent death, Robert, who had protested against executions, did not want his killer to get the death penalty no matter how heinous the crime or how much Robert had suffered.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Wright said she is proceeding with the capital prosecution.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"We make our decisions based on the facts and the law, not public opinion," she said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution, June 18, 2016</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">- Report an error, an omission:<a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com" target="_blank"> deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a></span> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span> <span style="font-size: small;"> - Follow us on <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank">Facebook</a> </b>and <b><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank">Twitter</a></b></span></div></div>

Georgia Inadequate counsel LWOP USA Georgia executions rise, while death sentences plummet

Georgia's death chamber It's Georgia's new death penalty paradox: the state is executing inmates at a record clip, but prosecuto...

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Death penalty chaos around the country

12.07 Unknown 0

<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimYBP1BQaJwUCowTHuxQQorJRyiEcc6q7eX0TUJ5lX96FIQnguLq0khhNt3iMnMeazKt88AopltRg1vzEKFVywVEU6Mo_MSYp2OksGSjgLRUookvEU7xLU-b3cOwTFUuAO5F3ef2KECjY/s1600/death+penalty+eliminated.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimYBP1BQaJwUCowTHuxQQorJRyiEcc6q7eX0TUJ5lX96FIQnguLq0khhNt3iMnMeazKt88AopltRg1vzEKFVywVEU6Mo_MSYp2OksGSjgLRUookvEU7xLU-b3cOwTFUuAO5F3ef2KECjY/s400/death+penalty+eliminated.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Nevada just became the ninth death penalty state to go a decade or more without an execution. Add those nine to the 19 states without capital punishment, and you have 28 states that have abandoned executions in either law or practice.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And in the remaining states? The death penalty is in complete chaos.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Florida’s death penalty law has already been thrown out twice in 2016. The first ruling came from the U.S. Supreme Court in January. The Florida legislature then passed a “fix” to the law, and last month a Miami judge threw it out again. Alabama’s death penalty law is similar to Florida’s, and the Supreme Court sent a death sentence back for review for the third time this week because of those similarities.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Meanwhile, prosecutors in Georgia have come under fire for illegally keeping African Americans off the jury in a death penalty case. The Supreme Court overturned the sentence with a vote of 7-1. The defendant is one of many black men sentenced to die by an all-white jury across the south.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Lethal injection debacles continue as states struggle to find drugs, hide their processes in secrecy, or carry out executions with outright “systemic ineptitude.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Oklahoma is back at the heart of the lethal injection controversy. A grand jury released 106 pages of scathing critiques last month, citing “inexcusable failures” in the state’s execution process. According to the Washington Post, the grand jury:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“…paints these officials as careless and, in some cases, reckless. The missteps described by the grand jury include a pharmacist ordering the wrong drug for executions, multiple state employees failing to notice or tell anyone about the mixup and a high-ranking official in the governor’s office urging others to carry out an execution even with the incorrect drug.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The same secrecy and lack of oversight found in Oklahoma is common in other states, too, and has contributed to execution problems in Missouri, Georgia, and Ohio.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And now Pfizer, the last remaining, FDA-approved supplier of lethal injection drugs, declared it no longer wants to be in the execution business. Pfizer announced sweeping new restrictions on the distribution of some if its drugs, preventing them from being used in executions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The last death penalty holdouts show that the only way to have a death penalty is to accept bias, ineptitude, and arbitrariness. It’s only a matter of time before the death penalty is gone for good.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: <a href="http://ejusa.org/death-penalty-chaos-around-the-country/" target="_blank">Equal Justice USA</a>, Sarah Craft, June 7, 2016</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: small;">- Report an error, an omission:<a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com" target="_blank"> deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a></span> <span style="font-size: small;"> </span> <span style="font-size: small;"> - Follow us on <b><a href="https://www.facebook.com/Death-Penalty-News-206848499362906/" target="_blank">Facebook</a> </b>and <b><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank">Twitter</a></b></span></div></div>

Alabama Florida Georgia lethal injections Missouri Nevada Ohio Oklahoma Pfizer SCOTUS USA Death penalty chaos around the country

Nevada just became the ninth death penalty state to go a decade or more without an execution. Add those nine to the 19 states without capita...

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Execution set for July 14 would be the 6th in Georgia this year

U.S. Supreme Court Reverses Another Alabama Death Penalty Case

Georgia executions rise, while death sentences plummet

Death penalty chaos around the country

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