Arkansas judge criticizes secrecy in U.S. executions

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKrWGKnCqVqhI-KEAdf9q_SwmSBsVt0AdJwFaQVBgjcM78MeX08DVRDH3cAA3xpqknQPtdDxCMzLWyJ8fqBBwKqZqxAocd1EQDIwGxB3mgjGdhMU3UVX4aFzTOypxloIwPnDmJHAshyIQ/s1600/Lethal+injections.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKrWGKnCqVqhI-KEAdf9q_SwmSBsVt0AdJwFaQVBgjcM78MeX08DVRDH3cAA3xpqknQPtdDxCMzLWyJ8fqBBwKqZqxAocd1EQDIwGxB3mgjGdhMU3UVX4aFzTOypxloIwPnDmJHAshyIQ/s320/Lethal+injections.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">An Arkansas judge who last year declared unconstitutional a law that allows the state to keep confidential the source of drugs used for execution by lethal injection has lamented a 5-4 decision by the Arkansas Supreme Court reversing his ruling.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In a breakout session on the death penalty at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly June 24, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen said that since the Supreme Court upheld the use of capital punishment for certain crimes, the death penalty debate has shifted to whether specific execution procedures satisfy the Eighth Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"How it's being done now is we'll make sure it's nice by making sure it's secret so you don't know how barbaric it is," said Griffen, who also serves as pastor of CBF-affiliated New Millennium Church in Little Rock, Ark. Griffen said legal action surrounding capital punishment now focuses on "seeking to discover the chemicals that are being used to put people to death and discover where they are coming from."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The day before the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld a state law that allows for the type, manufacturers and sellers of drugs used for lethal injections to be kept confidential. The law is designed to ensure the state can find a place to buy the drugs in a market where pharmaceutical companies are rapidly withdrawing from the lethal injection trade.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Not only are inmates on death row not entitled to know who is selling the drugs, Griffen said, they also cannot find out the qualifications of the individuals who will administer them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"If you want to euthanize your dog, you know that under your state only the people who have certain credentials can put your dog down," Griffen said at the CBF workshop. "If you want to euthanize your neighbor - if you want to kill your neighbor in the name of the state - I 10-time double-dog dare you to find out the qualifications of the person who is doing it."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"As a matter of fact, there is no requirement that the state tell you, and they have an affirmative obligation to not disclose that," the judge continued. "It is amazing. One would call it irony, but it's too nice a word."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Pfizer, the world's 2nd-largest drug company adopted distribution controls in March to prevent its drugs from reaching execution chambers across the United States.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Pfizer makes its products to enhance and save the lives of the patients we serve," the company said in a statement. "Consistent with these values, Pfizer strongly objects to the use of its products as lethal injections for capital punishment."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Reprieve, a New York-based human rights organization, said in May that all 25 FDA-approved manufacturers of potential execution drugs now have blocked their sale for use in capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The ruling by the Arkansas high court clears the way for the execution of 8 people on death row whose lives were extended by Griffen's temporary restraining order last Oct. 9. One of the state's execution drugs expires before the Supreme Court decision goes in effect, however, and the supplier has told officials it would not supply any more.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: baptistnews.com, June 27, 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>

Arkansas lethal injections Pfizer Pharmacies USA Arkansas judge criticizes secrecy in U.S. executions

An Arkansas judge who last year declared unconstitutional a law that allows the state to keep confidential the source of drugs used for exec...

Baca selengkapnya »

Sentenced to death: A waiting game for 'the worst of the worst'

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXedosnEnVevuCSuR7FGA0a05RqQxdGHO51jX3RE4m572xRFlpLP4tCHfgfA0m-mgdcd_wMOMu2NdmdHZwSrXhzy8KFzy3OceZ9n1muRQd0gcon4RrwgMqhvjYsk_0AwvVGWeG7BaY780/s1600/Solitary+Confinement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXedosnEnVevuCSuR7FGA0a05RqQxdGHO51jX3RE4m572xRFlpLP4tCHfgfA0m-mgdcd_wMOMu2NdmdHZwSrXhzy8KFzy3OceZ9n1muRQd0gcon4RrwgMqhvjYsk_0AwvVGWeG7BaY780/s400/Solitary+Confinement.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">When Antwan Andre Anthony was sentenced to death in April for the 2012 killings of 3 convenience store workers in Farmville, it marked the end of a long wait for justice and the start of another.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Anthony, 33, became the fourth man since the early 1990s to be sentenced to death for a conviction of murder in Pitt County. He is one of 150 death row inmates in North Carolina. Before Anthony, the last inmate to be received on death row was in 2014.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Most of North Carolina's death row inmates - 111 of the 151 - have been there for 15 years or longer, with much of that time spent in the appeals process. The state also has had a de facto moratorium on the death penalty, and the last execution was 10 years ago.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Will Anthony ever meet the fate assigned to him by a jury and judge in Pitt County? It's not likely, according to Frank Baumgartner, a professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has spent nearly 20 years studying the death penalty.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"65 % of the time, death sentences are overturned on appeal, and those reversals might come 3 years later, 5 years later, 10 years later, but that's an especially shocking number," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Across the country, more than 8,000 death sentences have been handed down, but many of those sentences are overturned, with the defendant then receiving a sentence of life without parole, Baumgartner said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The 2nd-largest number of people who have been sentenced to death have simply languished on death row for 20 or 30 years," he said. And the least likely outcome is that the person will be executed.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Nationally, it's not uncommon that the few executions that do take place, the crimes took place in the '80s," Baumgartner said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The average delay is about 20 years.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For Anthony, Baumgartner said, "what happens now is going to be a very long waiting game."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Automatic appeals</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Anthony and other defendants sentenced to death automatically are entitled to 2 rounds of appeals, 1 on the state level and another on the federal level, Baumgartner said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is not uncommon for the process to take 10 to 20 years, said Jeff Welty, associate professor of public law and government at the School of Government at UNC.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Generally, there are 4 steps to the appeals process, he said. In the initial step, called the direct appeal, the inmate and his defense team identify what they believe to be legal errors during trial and appeal to the N.C. Supreme Court.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"If that's not successful, we go to step 2, which is sometimes called the state collateral review, and at that point, the defendant files something called motion for appropriate relief and they file it with the superior court in the jurisdiction where they were tried," Welty said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That already has happened in the Anthony case.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Anthony's attorneys filed a motion for appropriate relief about a week after he was sentenced on grounds that a sheriff's office employee reportedly made improper comments within earshot of jurors during the trial. The comments allegedly included the employee's opinion on what should happen to Anthony.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A hearing to determine if that occurred and if it is cause for a new trial or sentencing hearing is scheduled for Aug. 1.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The grounds for reversal have to be very serious findings from appellate court," Baumgartner said. "It would have to be some very serious flaw that could have changed the outcome, either in the trial for guilt or more likely in the penalty phase."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If the superior court does not rule in favor of the defendant on a motion for appropriate relief, the defendant can appeal that decision to the state Supreme Court, Welty said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"If that step doesn't bear fruit, then the case moves on to step 3, which is federal habeas review," he said. "... The idea there is to allow federal courts to take a look and make sure that state courts are carrying out their constitutional responsibilities."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That process begins in federal district court and can be appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia and ultimately to the U.S. Supreme Court.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If all of those avenues of appeal fail, the defendant's last opportunity is to make a request for clemency to the governor, Welty said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Sticking points</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">North Carolina is 1 of 31 states where the death penalty is legal. It has been abolished in 19 states. While North Carolina has not declared any official moratorium on the death penalty, there have been no executions since 2006.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"There's been a whole bunch of litigation about different aspects of the death penalty that has had the effect of creating a de facto moratorium," Welty said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The 3 sticking points have been the requirement that a licensed physician be present during an execution, concerns about the lethal injection procedure and uncertainty surrounding claims filed under the now-repealed Racial Justice Act.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The Medical Board took the position that doctors couldn't participate in executions, and that caused litigation between the state and the Medical Board," Welty said. A bill that became law last year removed that requirement and allows for other medical professionals, a nurse practitioner for example, to be present instead of a doctor.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One of the next hurdles is the contention about lethal injection.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Around the country, there's been so many controversies about lethal injections that have gone wrong," Baumgartner said, "so you can bet your bottom dollar that when they schedule the 1st execution, there will be litigation about what drug will be used and how can we guarantee the safety of the drug supply and where do they get the drugs, and all those complicated wranglings will start happening about the lethal injection process."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF6fUKet9Z3xSW14vetEBoUiVqQ0uqhmT3q7jepKCdbhSlY9rUKLrOCO-tvOmIoGfQgCDaFcHweHXzwNW_9CLXJEm2CJ97Q_VQsuJOLTt9NH65AUiHBSCijEAup3WkXBB3N8WVIJh-QZ0/s1600/pfizer-world-headquarters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF6fUKet9Z3xSW14vetEBoUiVqQ0uqhmT3q7jepKCdbhSlY9rUKLrOCO-tvOmIoGfQgCDaFcHweHXzwNW_9CLXJEm2CJ97Q_VQsuJOLTt9NH65AUiHBSCijEAup3WkXBB3N8WVIJh-QZ0/s320/pfizer-world-headquarters.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Last month, pharmaceutical giant Pfizer took steps to prevent distribution of its products for use in lethal injections. Pfizer limited the sale of seven of its products to wholesalers, distributors and direct purchasers under the condition that the products would not be resold to correctional institutions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Pfizer's move further complicates the lethal injection process in states that used its products for that purpose.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There already is ongoing litigation over the Racial Justice Act, which was enacted in 2009 and allowed inmates to challenge their death sentences based on racial disparity statistics, related mostly to jury selection, Baumgartner said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nearly all death row inmates filed claims under the act, and 4 cases were heard in court, with each defendant seeing success. But the act was repealed last year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A Cumberland County judge assigned to hear the 4 inmates' appeals on Thursday volunteered to remove himself, following months of arguments by defense attorneys that he had conflicts of interest. Another judge will be assigned to hear the appeals.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Lawyers will be arguing probably for more than another year about whether the inmates who filed have a right to have their case heard under a law that no longer exists," Baumgartner said. "You have to be a lawyer to figure that one out, but it's still part of the landscape here in North Carolina, so I don't think we're going to be looking at the resumption of executions anytime soon."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>'Worst of the worst'</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Experts say there has been a sharp decline in the number of death sentences. In the last 5 years, 7 men have been sentenced to death in North Carolina.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Between 1993 and 1999, the number of defendants to receive the death penalty statewide generally was in double-digits. Now, the number of death sentences each year ranges from 0 to 3.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The main reason is prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty as much, and juries are loathe to hand it out anymore," Baumgartner said. That may be because a high number of the accused have had their convictions overturned after it was determined they were innocent, he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"There's been about 1,400 executions nationally since 1976 and 158 exonerations," he said. "In North Carolina, there have been 42 (executions) and 5 or 6 exonerations. So it's almost like 1 in 10. That's a pretty scary, pretty low batting average of getting it right."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Some might ask why the state even goes to bat for the death penalty if so many sentences are overturned and there have been no executions in the last 10 years.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The death penalty is still on the books," Pitt County Assistant District Attorney Clark Everett said. "I think you have to have the death penalty there for the worst of the worst. It's got to be there.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"You have to do it because who knows what's coming next week," he said. "If you don't follow the law and have some threshold where you say, 'Alright, this is a death penalty case,' then it pretty much puts you in a situation where you're never going to be able to."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The threshold includes 3 components: The murder must be particularly horrible, a double or triple homicide, for example; overwhelming evidence of guilt; and a defendant with significant criminal or violent history.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Juries who have found a defendant guilty in a capital trial face the task of determining if he should receive a sentence of life in prison without parole or death, but for now, Baumgartner says there isn't much of a difference.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The odds are that the person won't be executed, even though the state may try its best to make it happen," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nationally, there is only a 13 % chance it will be carried out, he said. Among those, the executions come decades later, after several appeals, which serve as a routine reminder of the crime. But defendants sentenced to life without parole are not guaranteed the same automatic appeals.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"LWOP is a death penalty by another name because you don't leave prison alive, and there's nothing light about that penalty," Baumgartner said. "It's like 2 forms of a death penalty we're talking about: one where you get automatic appeals and the most likely outcome is you end up on LWOP eventually, just after many years of appeals, and the other is you just go straight to LWOP, and that's the end of the story."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For Anthony, the process is just beginning.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"What will happen now is he'll get automatic appeals, and there will be a lot of money spent and, most likely, he'll never be executed," Baumgartner said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It's just a tragedy all the way around," he said, "because it's not helpful to anybody in the system to have a death penalty in name only."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: Reflector.com, June 12, 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>

lethal injections LWOP Moratorium North Carolina Pfizer USA Sentenced to death: A waiting game for 'the worst of the worst'

When Antwan Andre Anthony was sentenced to death in April for the 2012 killings of 3 convenience store workers in Farmville, it marked the e...

Baca selengkapnya »

Death penalty chaos around the country

<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...

Baca selengkapnya »