Penn State researchers analyze death penalty findings

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrkVn_fXp9K-yZSjfNh-qqaojqXfUUSVsnbbvsIaTYDxGoSLc-zpJbrOwfU8LPBe13S2-M3olivI5URk25X5MWdt6WNzptAAvdXnCfKR6DA76BhFOJvayB0t5u-2JQntdH1O4l7AT6jCw/s1600/archives-and-records.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Archives and records" border="0" height="293" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrkVn_fXp9K-yZSjfNh-qqaojqXfUUSVsnbbvsIaTYDxGoSLc-zpJbrOwfU8LPBe13S2-M3olivI5URk25X5MWdt6WNzptAAvdXnCfKR6DA76BhFOJvayB0t5u-2JQntdH1O4l7AT6jCw/s400/archives-and-records.jpg" title="Archives and records" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Penn State researchers studying whether racial bias affects the imposition of the death penalty have begun crunching the data, a move signaling the end of a 4-year saga of waiting on a state report that has officially halted executions in the state.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Penn State findings might be made public before year's end.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While the analysis is in the early stages, the professor leading the research said he expects similar findings to what the Reading Eagle reported last week on the distribution of death sentences in Pennsylvania.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I think it'll be a good complement to what you've done, with some details that will flesh out the issues that you've raised," said John Kramer, a retired Penn State criminology professor. "I don't suspect that it will erase the (Eagle's) findings."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In an investigation spanning 5 months, the Eagle found Pennsylvania has sentenced 408 defendants to death since 1978, at a rate of 1.6 death sentences for every 100 homicides. The rate for counties varied from zero to more than 7, indicating wide prosecutorial discretion.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Following the U.S. Supreme Court's 1972 decision in <i>Furman v. Georgia</i> that found capital punishment unconstitutional, states created statutes that were intended to make its application less arbitrary, particularly for black defendants.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Going back to the Furman decision, the question is: Have we controlled that kind of discretion adequately?" Kramer said. "I'm sure we will cite your article when we're reviewing our data."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The meticulous gathering of data on more than 900 first-degree murder cases from 2000 to 2010 in 18 counties has been tedious and painstakingly slow, pushing a state report that was expected 3 years ago back several times.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kramer's team has been out in the field since 2012 poring over court files in counties stretching from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to identify charging and sentencing patterns in 1st-degree murder cases. The death penalty is reserved almost exclusively for the crime of murder.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Researchers hope to learn whether race is a factor in who is charged capitally and ultimately sentenced to death in Pennsylvania.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This investigation will be folded into the study state lawmakers called for in 2011. That report, by the Joint State Government Commission, isn't expected until six months after Penn State concludes its study for the Interbranch Commission for Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As directed by lawmakers, the state report will examine 17 issues around the death penalty, including its cost, deterrence and quality of counsel.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The commission's reports often are completed within a year and include recommendations.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Recommendations in the long awaited report, however, will likely relate to data collection, which is sorely lacking. The Joint State Government Commission will not be recommending whether to continue to support or abolish the death penalty, said Glenn Pasewicz, executive director of the Joint State Government Commission.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"From the beginning, it was not the intent that the report would come up with some firm recommendations about what capital punishment should be in Pennsylvania," Pasewicz said. "We're going to leave the big questions to the Legislature itself. We'll provide them with as much information as we can, and they can sort it all out."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For years, Pennsylvania's death penalty system has been a source of consternation among those on both sides of the issue. Having sentenced hundreds in the modern era and executed only 3, it is widely perceived as dysfunctional.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Another round</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It has been studied before.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 1999, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court directed a study on whether racial or gender bias influences the judicial system, including the death penalty. In the committee's 550-page report in 2003, it made more than 170 recommendations, including issuing a moratorium on executions. Gov. Tom Wolf issued one last year, saying executions would not resume until the state report is completed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Based on existing data and studies, the committee concluded that there are strong indications that Pennsylvania's capital justice system does not operate in an evenhanded manner," the group's report said, noting the responsibility of ensuring equal justice under the law cannot fall to a single branch of government.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The committee also took aim at the quality of capital representation, which the Eagle explored last fall, finding nearly 1 in5 inmates sentenced to death in Pennsylvania the past decade were represented by attorneys disciplined for professional misconduct at some point in their careers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The committee's report said of capital representation, "Unless the poor, among whom minority communities are overrepresented, are provided adequate legal representation, including ample funds for experts and investigators, there cannot be a lasting solution to the issue of racial and ethnic bias in the capital system."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The group also recommended original research to study the issue further.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It's critical that we do our own studies," said Lisette McCormick, executive director of the Pittsburgh-based Interbranch Commission for Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness, which conducted the review at the Supreme Court's direction.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>'There are gaps'</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Established in 2005 by Pennsylvania's three branches of government, the Interbranch Commission for Gender, Racial and Ethnic Fairness is tasked with addressing inequities in the court system.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">McCormick added, noting there is no systematic data collection on Pennsylvania's death penalty: "There are gaps. You cannot conduct a valid study with gaps."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Penn State report - Kramer said an internal draft would be completed next month - was commissioned in part to address this gap. McCormick's group is funding the report at a cost of about $325,000.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Eagle's cost and sentence-distribution findings, McCormick said, were consistent with other studies she's reviewed for the current state study.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The shortage of original research on Pennsylvania's death penalty system, Kramer and McCormick said, is directly related to the difficulty of winnowing out information buried, oftentimes in storage, in hundreds of case boxes across the commonwealth.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kramer's data collectors could examine, at their quickest pace, a maximum of 5 cases a day and averaged only 3 or 4. And some days, they would sift through case boxes and collect no pertinent data.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"There's just not any data that you can put together to do this study without investing a tremendous amount of time," Kramer said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: Reading Eagle, June 16, 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>

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Penn State researchers studying whether racial bias affects the imposition of the death penalty have begun crunching the data, a move signal...

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Georgia executions rise, while death sentences plummet

<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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U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Two Major Death Penalty Cases

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7XMgC_pg63z89Vkq5D_5-dexwvW118-hqVXU97xzM_Zdny_LO2ILwLqwBKbWNeNJND-hko1ol5qbLV1GNI04Ubb9raASvRxbHR87HV4od0CKOE2aOHng6D-3nhU7qMbnxRfhBGpfMto8/s1600/US+Supreme+Court.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7XMgC_pg63z89Vkq5D_5-dexwvW118-hqVXU97xzM_Zdny_LO2ILwLqwBKbWNeNJND-hko1ol5qbLV1GNI04Ubb9raASvRxbHR87HV4od0CKOE2aOHng6D-3nhU7qMbnxRfhBGpfMto8/s320/US+Supreme+Court.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear two cases raising major questions about the death penalty, including whether executing a condemned inmate more than 35 years after he was sentenced to death violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That case, <i>Moore v. Texas</i>, No. 15-797, concerns Bobby J. Moore, who has been on death row since 1980 for shooting and killing an elderly Houston supermarket clerk, James McCarble, during a robbery. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr. Moore’s case also raises questions about whether Texas uses outdated standards in assessing whether a defendant’s intellectual disability was severe enough to bar his execution.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The second case, <i>Buck v. Stephens</i>, No. 15-8049, concerns the role race may play in capital sentencing. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Duane Buck was convicted of the 1995 murders of a former girlfriend and another man. Texas law allows death sentences only if prosecutors can show the defendant poses a future danger to society.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">During the trial’s sentencing phase, Mr. Buck’s lawyer presented testimony from a psychologist who said that race is one of the factors associated with future dangerousness. I</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">n their petition seeking Supreme Court review, Mr. Buck’s new lawyers said his trial lawyer had been ineffective and that Mr. Buck’s death sentence was infected by racial bias.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/07/us/politics/supreme-court-to-hear-two-major-death-penalty-cases.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>, Adam Liptak, June 6, 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>

Inadequate counsel Inordinate delay Mental retardation mentally incompetent inmates Race SCOTUS Texas USA U.S. Supreme Court to Hear Two Major Death Penalty Cases

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear two cases raising major questions about the death penalty, including whether executi...

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