Boston Marathon bombings: The death penalty still isn't appropriate

Boston Marathon finish line
moments before the explosions

Despite the emotional devastation, the government is wrong to seek that punishment in the trial of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

It was a horrendous attack. 2 bombs left in backpacks near the finish line of the annual Boston Marathon exploded on April 15, killing 3 people and injuring an astounding 264 others - many of whom, including children, lost limbs and suffered other life-altering wounds.

But should our emotional response to that act of terrorism blind us to the appropriateness of the criminal penalty to be sought? No.

The Justice Department filed papers Thursday in federal court in Boston saying that it intends to seek the death penalty against Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving brother of the pair suspected of planting the bombs. The filing cites Tsarnaev's alleged use of a weapon of mass destruction and his "reckless disregard for human life," as well as the premeditation of the act. The papers also mention Tsarnaev's alleged betrayal of the country that granted him citizenship and his lack of remorse. U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. added that the decision to seek the death penalty was based on the "nature of the conduct at issue and the resultant harm."

Given the magnitude of the crime, it is understandable that the victims - from the families of those killed and maimed, to the city of Boston, to, by extension, the nation - feel the urge for revenge. This page has long opposed the death penalty, yet we also found ourselves caught up in the emotions surrounding Timothy McVeigh's 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, and supported his death sentence - a stance we have since regretted.

That tumbling to the emotion of the moment, though, points up one of the primary roles of the judicial system: to act as a buffer between victims' justifiable thirst for vengeance and the greater good of society. In our view, it is not the rightful responsibility of the state to act as executioner of its own citizens, no matter how heinous the crime, no matter how infamous the criminal and no matter how loudly people may call for it. Instead, society should put aside its visceral notions of revenge with a thoughtful examination of the morality, cost and effectiveness of capital punishment.

Cases like this test our strength as a mature democracy, and as a people who believe in justice. That's not to say convicted murderers and other perpetrators of egregious crimes shouldn't face severe punishment. Life without parole is the correct response in these extreme cases. It punishes the criminal while protecting society from future acts of violence.

As a nation that believes in justice, we should drop our embrace of the death penalty as a relic of the barbaric past.

Source: Editorial, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 3, 2014

U.S. Seeking Death Penalty in Marathon Bombing

Boston Marathon finish line
moments prior to the explosions

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department said Thursday that it would seek the death penalty against Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, the man accused of killing and maiming people with homemade bombs at the Boston Marathon finish line last year.

The decision sets in motion the highest-profile federal death penalty case since Timothy J. McVeigh was prosecuted and executed for the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

The decision, however, is not cast in stone. In nearly half of federal death penalty cases, prosecutors withdraw the threat of execution before trial, typically because of a plea deal, according to the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who had the final say on whether to authorize prosecutors to seek the death penalty, has said he personally opposes capital punishment, but he has authorized its use many times.

Prosecutors say Mr. Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan, built bombs out of pressure cookers and detonated them 13 seconds apart among spectators at the finish line. The explosions killed three people and injured more than 260 others.

Source: The New York Times, January 30, 2014

Timothy McVeigh and the Myth of Closure

The families of his victims were allowed to watch him die, but in the years that passed, many were left without a sense of finality. A new book follows these people, searching for an answer to a powerful question: When does a tragedy end?

Eleven years ago today-- on June 11, 2001-- Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh was executed by lethal injection at the federal death chamber in Terre Haute, Indiana. He died with his eyes open, it was reported, staring up at the closed-circuit camera that was beaming his execution back to Oklahoma. Four years earlier, almost to the day, a federal jury in Denver, Colorado, had sentenced him to death for the murder of 168 people, killed in a truck bomb blast at the Alfred P. Murrah federal building on April 19, 1995.

When the death sentence was revealed on June 13, 1997, The Denver Post reported at the time, there was little of the public cheering that had accompanied the jury's first verdict. Then, there had been a measure of jubilation on the streets outside the courthouse in downtown Denver. This time, on Friday the 13th, there was mostly just a sense of relief. "I'm glad it's complete," juror David Gilger said. "I hope it brings a sense of closure to everyone."

Out of this curious history comes Killing McVeigh: The Death Penalty and the Myth of Closure, a timely new book by Indiana University School of Law associate professor Jody Lynee Madeira. In it, Madeira asks a question most of us have asked at one time or another in our lives: "What is closure? Does it exist? If so, where and for whom. If not, why?"

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Atlantic, Andrew Cohen. Mr. Cohen is a contributing editor at The Atlantic and legal analyst for 60 Minutes. He is also chief analyst and legal editor for CBS Radio News and has won a Murrow Award as one of the nation's leading legal analysts and commentators.

Oklahoma City victim's dad speaks against death penalty

Bud Welch found that he had a lot in common with the father of the man executed for killing 168 people -- including Welch's daughter Julie -- in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. "We both buried our children, in different ways and at different times, but from the same event," he said during a program here Tuesday night.

Julie Welch was 23, working as a Spanish interpreter in the Social Security Administration the morning that a bomb leveled the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. She had just met a client in the lobby and was leading him into the office when the blast occurred, shortly after 9 a.m. on April 19, 1995. She was planning to have lunch with her father in a little Greek restaurant across the street later that day.

"That was a Wednesday; they found her body on Saturday," Welch said. "I found out later that she and her boyfriend had been talking about getting engaged. Timothy McVeigh was convicted more than two years later and was ultimately executed, but nothing about that gave me any peace."

A board member of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, Welch spoke to about 25 people in the St. Gabriel Church Hall. He talked about driving Julie to Marquette University for her freshman year, and inadvertently embarrassing her by taking his daughter's teddy bear out of the car in front of her dorm. He described his daughter's gift for learning languages, her two semesters studying abroad and her determination to win scholarships to help pay for college. But Julie was a real person who also had her flaws, Welch said.

"I'm not going to tell you about those tonight," the retired service station owner said. But he shared one other memory: his daughter had opposed the 1991 Gulf War -- the war that McVeigh and co-defendant Terry Nichols returned from with post-traumatic stress syndrome. A devout Catholic, Julie also opposed the death penalty, her dad said, "because she said it was teaching children to hate."

And so, before the trial, Welch met with Bill and Jennifer McVeigh, Tim's father and sister, in their Buffalo home and promised to do whatever he could to keep Timothy from getting the death penalty.

"When I said that, I felt like a tremendous weight had been lifted from me," Welch said. "I never felt closer to God, and I'd met an even bigger victim of the Oklahoma City bombing. Every time I talk about Julie I keep her memory alive, but because of what happened Bill McVeigh was never able to say anything positive about his son."

Among the attendees Tuesday night was Joseph Benefico, a retired Milford police sargeant. His long career in law enforcement has left him with decidely mixed views on capital punishment, Benefico said. "On one hand there's the chance that the wrong person could be executed. There have been 138 people cleared by DNA evidence who were on death row. But then, with the Cheshire home invasion, it's really hard to oppose it in that case."

Connecticut appears close once again to abolishing the death penalty, said Bo Chamberlin, field organizer for the state network working for its repeal. A bill in the Judiciary Committee is likely to be approved next week and presented to the House and Senate for a full vote, and Gov. Dannel P Malloy has promised to sign it, Chamberlin said. Then-Gov. M. Jodi Rell vetoed a similar measure in 2009.

Source: Connecticut Post, April 6, 2011

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Lethal injection made its debut in Oklahoma 20 years ago

The gurney in the execution chamber
at the State Penitentiary in
McAlester, Oklahoma

Oklahoma has been executing prisoners by means of lethal injection for nearly 20 years. The technique still is the subject of many legal challenges.

The killing got off to a late start.

Witnesses who'd gathered at the state penitentiary in McAlester expected Charles Troy Coleman to commence dying at 12:02 a.m. That's when the execution was set to start.

As the clock ticked toward a quarter after the hour, though, prison officials remained quiet. Some observers worried that something was amiss. Others wondered whether the Supreme Court had stepped in or whether the governor had issued a last-minute stay.

About 12:15 a.m., the dozen media witnesses were escorted into a viewing room. There would be a death that night, after all. Curtains opened, and Coleman, a murderer, could be seen inside the death chamber. He was lying on a gurney. A sheet covered his body, but his head was exposed.

The execution began 10 minutes later.

Art Cox, of the Enid News & Eagle, who witnessed it, described Coleman's end as a "very easy death ... a very cold death, very antiseptic.” Warden James Saffle said Coleman died quickly.

Joe Ward, an investigator for the public defender's office who had come to know and like Coleman, perceived it differently.

"I saw him choke and gasp and struggle for air,” Ward said. "It looked like he was choking to death. He looked over ... and mouthed the words, 'I love you.' Then he looked straight back up and started choking.”

He was pronounced dead at 12:35 a.m.

It was Sept. 10, 1990. Oklahoma had executed its first prisoner by lethal injection.

Over the next two decades, the state would employ the drug cocktail 91 more times, executing more people in that span than in the preceding 75 years. Three were women. Additional convicts are scheduled to die this year.

The federal government and the 35 states with the death penalty use lethal injection as the primary form of execution, and it has been used on 1,050 prisoners nationwide, including Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

But it — like the death penalty itself — has spurred ardent debate, and condemned prisoners continue to file appeals claiming that state-sanctioned drug deaths are unconstitutional and cruel.

Twenty years after Coleman's death, the method remains as controversial as ever.

'Most humane'

Coleman was the only Oklahoma convict put to death in 1990 and the first since James French was electrocuted in 1966.

The death penalty was suspended by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972. The court declared in Furman v. Georgia that Georgia's death penalty system violated the Eighth Amendment, which protects against cruel and unusual punishment. The court's decision stopped executions nationwide and commuted the sentences of hundreds of condemned prisoners.

The ban didn't last. States changed their death penalty laws to avoid the constitutional problems cited by the court, and in 1977, Utah executed Gary Gilmore by firing squad.

That same year, Oklahoma became the first state to establish lethal injection as a method of execution. Dr. Jay Chapman, Oklahoma's first medical examiner, devised the recipe that still is used in most states today.

"The proposal was for three drugs,” he said recently. "Some people have termed it a cocktail. It starts with an ultra short-acting barbiturate, which renders the individual unconscious, then the vecuronium bromide, which paralyzes, and then the third drug, potassium chloride, which stops the heart.”

Lethal injection was developed as the "most humane” way to end life, he said.

"It could not be construed as cruel and unusual punishment since it is merely the extreme of procedures done daily around the world for surgical procedures,” Chapman said. "It's simply an extreme form of anesthesia.”

Condemned prisoners insist that Chapman is wrong.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center: "Those raising lethal injection challenges (both those executed and those stayed) are generally claiming that the drugs used in the executions cause extreme and unnecessary pain, and that the combination of chemicals masks the pain being experienced by the inmate from the sight of those administering the death penalty.”

Some prisoners have had dramatic reactions to the drugs. In 1992, Oklahoman killer Robyn Lee Parks took 11 minutes to die. The Oklahoman's Don Mecoy, who witnessed Parks' death, wrote:

"Parks was blinking and nervously licking his lips when he gasped and violently gagged. His head jerked toward his right shoulder, turning away from the gathered witnesses as he lapsed into unconsciousness. He groaned as his girlfriend, Debra Sutton, cried out: 'This isn't real. This isn't real. Oh God, it isn't real.'”

Scott Carpenter, also a murderer, was executed in Oklahoma in 1997. Oklahoman reporter Tony Thornton wrote: "His body made 18 violent convulsions, followed by eight milder ones, before the life drained from him.”

Most, however, slip quietly into unconsciousness and death, and state Corrections Department spokesman Jerry Massie said he is unaware of any "major issues” resulting from lethal injections.

"We've had some occasions where they had more of a physical reaction to it, according to the witnesses, and we've had some issues with finding a vein at times, usually with intravenous drug users, but we've been able to resolve those,” he said.

Legal challenges

In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court validated the use of the three-drug cocktail but foresaw further arguments on the issue, the Death Penalty Information Center noted.

"I assumed that our decision would bring the debate about lethal injection as a method of execution to a close,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in an opinion. "It now seems clear that it will not. ... Instead of ending the controversy, I am now convinced that this case will generate debate not only about the constitutionality of the three-drug protocol ... but also about the justification for the death penalty itself.”

Most recently, a federal judge issued a 60-day stay of execution hours before Oklahoma prisoner Jeffrey David Matthews was to die on Aug. 17.

At issue was the Corrections Department's plan to use a different barbiturate than usual: Brevital, a form of methohexital sodium, instead of sodium thiopental. Manufacturing problems have caused a national shortage of the latter drug.

"We had it,” Massie said. "I don't know if it expired or what, but when we had it tested, we weren't satisfied with the quality of it.”

Defense attorneys argued that Brevital never has been used in executions and is not an acceptable alternative. The state said the drug meets the statutory requirement for an ultra short-acting barbiturate.

The Corrections Department now has obtained more sodium thiopental. The attorney general has asked the judge to lift the stay of execution. If the judge complies, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals will set a new execution date.

Source: NewsOK, Ken Raymond, Sept. 7, 2010

Japan: Scrap death penalty, bereaved families say

Murder victims' kin want debate on capital punishment, arguing it brings no closure.

Bud Welch (left) lost his only daughter, Julie, in the Oklahoma City bombing that claimed the lives of 168 people on April 19, 1995. His 23-year-old daughter was working as a Spanish translator at the Social Security Administration in the federal building targeted.

Until the tragedy, Welch, who had operated a Texaco gas station for 37 years, had opposed the death penalty all his life. But the incident affected him so deeply that he wanted the two bombers executed.

"I was so full of anger, so full of revenge. I wanted the death penalty both for Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nicols," Welch said in a recent interview in Tokyo, revealing that after his daughter's death he had self-medicated with alcohol to such an extent that his body ached from alcohol poisoning. He was also smoking four packs of cigarettes a day, he said.

Amid his grief and anger, however, Welch said he began to question how he could move forward with his life. After nearly a year's reflection, he had rationalized the issue and felt strongly that executing the perpetrators was not going to help him.

"I reached a conclusion that on the day we take Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nicols from their cage to kill them, it will simply be not part of my healing process. That killing wasn't going to help me," Welch said.

In fact, on June 11, 2001, the day McVeigh was executed, Welch said he felt nothing out of the ordinary and did not feel that his wounds had healed. Several family members of the 168 victims have come to him after the execution and told him that it didn't help them either, he noted.

About 1 1/2 years after his beloved daughter's death, Welch began to travel domestically and internationally to campaign against the death penalty and raise awareness of the fact that, contrary to what many believe, families of murder victims do not necessarily support executions.

Welch is currently visiting Japan along with four other Americans who are members of the Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights. Through June and early July, the group is touring East Asia to share their experiences in the hope that they will help promote public debate about the death penalty in societies that still use capital punishment.

The group, which arrived in Japan after visiting South Korea, began their speaking tour in Tokyo on Friday. After leaving the capital, they will this week continue their travels to Kobe, Kyoto, Hiroshima and Okayama. Their tour is being supported by the European Union, whose member states have all abolished the death penalty and are pushing Japan, the United States and other countries and regions to follow suit.

Among the members visiting Japan is Bob Curley (left) from Massachusetts, a technical assistance official at the Cambridge Fire Department. On Oct. 1, 1997, Curley's 10-year-old son, Jeffrey, was sexually abused and murdered by two men. The men stole the boy's bike and lured him to their car with the promise of getting him a new one.

In the months that followed, Curley led the political fight to reinstate the death penalty in Massachusetts and started a political debate on the issue.

"Losing a family member, a loved one like that, I would think you would be insane not to seek that revenge. I was with so much anger and so much pain," said Curley, whose previous opinion about the death penalty had swayed both ways.

As he observed the trials of the two murderers, however, Curley said he began to realize that the criminal justice system was not being applied fairly. The main perpetrator was convicted of second-degree murder and a life term with the possibility of parole. But the other man, who Curley said was the "tag along," was convicted of murder in the first degree and a life term without parole.

The financial situation of the two families made the difference as the main culprit's family was able to hire a better lawyer, Curley observed.

"The criminal justice system is a very good system but it's not perfect. I was able to see that firsthand, and was able to take a step back and take a good look at the death penalty," he said.

Meeting Welch and other families of the victims who were against capital punishment also helped him through the process. "Until that point, I would feel obligated, like I would be disrespectful to Jeffrey if I wasn't in support of the death penalty," Curley said.

It took a couple of years before Curley could publicly or privately admit that he had changed his mind. But the change doesn't mean that he has forgiven the perpetrators, he said, adding that he also respects other opinions victims' families may hold toward the death penalty.

"I think the best way to honor Jeff is to live my life and try to do much good," said Curley, who often works on child safety and supports the rights of victims.

A public opinion poll by the Japanese government in December revealed that 85 percent of those surveyed said they supported the death penalty. Among the major reasons of support, 54.1 percent replied that they believed that abolishing executions will not heal the pain of the victims and their families.

To a multiple choice question, 53.2 percent also said that those who committed heinous crimes should atone for it with their lives. Another 51.5 percent said abolishing the death penalty would increase heinous crimes.

Welch, however, rejected these opinions, pointing out that perpetrators do not care what is written in the law.

"The justice system is about trying to bring justice to what happened, but also having a system that corrects or stopping that from happening in the future," he said. "I think that's where the death penalty really fails dramatically because (perpetrators) didn't care about the laws on the book. They couldn't care less," Welch said. "The only way you can stop those kinds of people is to have information and to be able to physically stop them before it happens," he said.

Welch, who is visiting Japan for the second time to share his experience, also believes that speaking about his experience and views is a mission on behalf of his daughter, who was in fact an antideath penalty advocate. "It's like I'm keeping her alive. Julie, if she were living, would be 38 now. She'll be turning 39 in September. But she will always be 23 years old."

Source: The Japan Times, June 27, 2010

Oklahoma City Bombing Victim's Father Says Executions are Not Part of the Healing Process

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Bud Welch, father of Julie Welch who was killed in the Oklahoma City Bombing, recently appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show, just a few days before the 15th anniversary of the bombing in Oklahoma.

Welch, who is the president of Murder Victims' Familes for Human Rights, has been a long-time opponent of the death penalty and has said that executions are more often "staged political events" instead of a part of the healing process for victims.

When asked how he came to oppose the death pealty for Timothy McVeigh, Welch told Maddow, "I reached that point probably about a year after the bombing - close to a year. All my life, I had always opposed the death penalty. I just thought it was something that society should not be doing. And after Julie‘s death, I was so full of revenge and hate that I had to get retribution in some way. So I was for the death penalty probably for the first year. And after recognizing that killing Tim McVeigh was not part of my healing process, then I was able to move forward."

Read the full transcript of the interview here.

Sources: The Interview, The Rachel Maddow Show, April 16, 2010; The Death Penalty Information Center, April 20, 2010

Death penalty in 9/11 trials may be difficult

Legal experts say Obama was overly confident when he said that critics of the New York trial would be silenced 'when the death penalty is applied to' suspect Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

After Zacarias Moussaoui -- the accused "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11 attacks -- was sentenced to life in prison in 2006 because one juror in Virginia refused to agree to the death penalty, Moussaoui clapped his hands and called out, "America, you lost and I won." Now the Obama administration plans to seek a death sentence for Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed Sept. 11 mastermind.

Some legal experts say President Obama was overly confident when he predicted that critics of trying Mohammed in a federal courtroom in Manhattan would be silenced "when the death penalty is applied to him." The only modern-day terrorist sentenced to death in federal court was Oklahoma City bomber Timothy J. McVeigh.

"It will be an uphill battle to get a death penalty in these cases," said Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor in New York. He helped win convictions for four acolytes of Osama bin Laden who plotted the 1998 simultaneous bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people. Jurors in 2001 found the men guilty, but they were divided on the punishment. As a result, all four were sentenced to life in prison.

Some jurors said afterward that they opposed a death sentence because the defendants had said they wished to die as martyrs.

"Obviously, the 9/11 crimes are as serious as you can get," Butler said. "But it is difficult to get 12 people in Manhattan to agree on a death penalty."

Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr.'s decision this month to try Mohammed and other alleged Sept. 11 plotters in federal court rather than under the military commission system set up at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, set off a fierce legal and political fight that shows no sign of subsiding.

Critics say a Manhattan trial poses a grave security threat to New York. They also worry that the defendants will be acquitted or escape the death penalty, or that the suspects will use the trial to spew terrorist propaganda.

But defenders of the decision say the nation's courts have shown themselves fully capable of trying and convicting the worst of criminals. And, they say, trying the suspects as ordinary murderers is more fitting than treating them as warriors.

"The best thing Obama is doing here is saying these people are not terrorists with superhuman qualities. They need to be brought to justice and tried as criminals," said Karen J. Greenberg, a law professor at New York University. "We should have brought them to trial a long time ago."

She and others noted that a long list of terrorists have been tried and convicted in federal courts in Manhattan, including World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef.

Despite the disagreements, it's not certain that the different legal systems would produce different outcomes.

Lawyers on both sides have said that they fully expect Mohammed and his alleged co-conspirators to be found guilty. And though 12 military officers at Guantanamo might be more likely to impose the ultimate sanction than 12 civilians in New York, the limited experience with such commissions does not make that a foregone conclusion.

So far, the military commissions have surprised civil libertarians and the Pentagon by dismissing charges against some terrorism suspects and giving relatively lenient sentences to others.

The Pentagon's lawyers had sought a 30-year prison term for Salim Hamdan, Bin Laden's former driver, but last year a military judge sentenced him to serve just six more months in prison. Hamdan subsequently was released and sent home to Yemen.

It also is hard to assess the commissions' fairness or effectiveness.

Earlier this year, Congress adopted revised rules for the military trials that largely parallel those of the federal courts. The obvious difference is that the judge, the prosecutor, the defense lawyer and the jurors are military officers.

The rules of evidence differ in a few areas as well. For example, the military judge may permit hearsay -- out-of-court statements -- if the judge considers the testimony reliable. This would allow prosecutors to use statements from witnesses who are overseas.

By contrast, the Supreme Court has barred the use of nearly all such statements in civilian courts if the witness cannot or will not appear at the trial to be cross-examined.

Critics of trying the alleged Sept. 11 plotters at Guantanamo have said that uncertainty over the commission rules could have led to delays or lengthy appeals.

"These prosecutions could have been delayed for years while the courts resolved questions about hearsay or secret evidence," said Jameel Jaffer of the American Civil Liberties Union.

"A federal court trial should go more smoothly," he said, because the rules are well established.

Meanwhile, critics of Holder's decision have focused on the difficulties of trying international terrorism suspects in a civilian court in the heart of Manhattan.

"I suspect KSM is absolutely delighted by this decision," said Brad Berenson, a former White House lawyer in the George W. Bush administration, referring to Mohammed by his initials. "This means a return to the scene of his greatest triumph. And it gives him a megaphone 100 times greater than he would otherwise have."

Earlier this year, Mohammed said at a Guantanamo hearing that he wished to plead guilty. But Duke University law professor Scott Silliman said the government should not count on him and his four alleged co-conspirators to plead guilty now.

"I think it's likely KSM will want to use the trial as a forum for himself and to put the government on trial. I will be very surprised if he pleads guilty," said Silliman, a former military lawyer. "We should expect a long, convoluted trial full of difficulties for the government."

Before trial, the five defendants' attorneys are likely to ask for a change of venue and to ask for the charges to be dismissed because the long-held defendants were denied a "speedy trial."

"There also will be a mountain of discovery motions," said Charles "Cully" Stimson, a former Pentagon lawyer in the George W. Bush administration. Defense lawyers will demand to see files and cables that contain evidence involving the alleged 9/11 plotters.

Supporters of Holder's decision say convictions in an open federal court will be a triumph for American justice.

"This trial is going to be fair," said Stephen Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University. "It will show that we Americans play by a set of rules. And that the truth comes out in court for all to see."

Source: The Los Angeles Times, Nov. 30, 2009

Louisiana death penalty: an eye for an eye or ineffective?

In all, 94 people found guilty of capital crimes, such as first-degree murder or treason, have been executed in Louisiana since 1941. Eighty-two more, including two women, sit on death row today.

Their impending executions and those of others punished under Louisiana's death penalty have come under the scrutiny of media, victims, lawmakers, activists and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Some say the state's capital punishment law, like those of 34 other states, is bound in the biblical tradition that those who take a life may be killed. The death penalty brings justice to victims' families and deters would-be killers, proponents argue.

"Most people believe that some people ought to get the death penalty — there are some crimes that are so bad that the person who commits (them) ought to be given the death penalty, if convicted," said death penalty expert Burk Foster, a former University of Louisiana-Lafayette criminal justice associate professor now teaching in Michigan.

Others insist the law is distorted and ineffective. Eight Louisiana death row inmates have been exonerated of their alleged crimes. More sentences overturned in recent years paired with fewer executions have all but already abolished the state's death penalty, they say.

"It's not as easy to get a death penalty (verdict) and certainly not (easy to) get one at this point," said Sabine District Attorney Don Burkett, who helped put three men on death row while district attorney for DeSoto and Sabine parishes. "I don't know how effective the death penalty is because there are so few being carried out."

Dwindling executions

The last execution in Louisiana was in May 2002. Leslie Dale Martin was put to death by lethal injection for the 1991 rape and killing of a 19-year-old college student. No other execution is scheduled, said Pam Laborde, Louisiana Department of Corrections spokeswoman.

Of the 27 men put to death since Louisiana reinstated the death penalty in 1979, 18 were executed between 1983 and 1988. Seven more were put to death during the '90s and just two were executed since 2000.

That mirrors a national trend. There have been 1,171 executions nationwide since 1976. The annual number has steadily dropped from a peak of 98 in 1999 to 37 executions last year, the Death Penalty Information Center reports.

"Louisiana was one of the most active death penalty states in the first 10 years after the death penalty was reinstated," Foster said. "Then it began to slow down. When we switched from electrocution to lethal injection it slowed down even more."

The reasons for that trend are varied, but better, more qualified legal representation for death row defendants has contributed to a lull in executions and an increase in exonerations and sentences being reversed, Foster said.

Since 2007, 11 men, not including those exonerated, have been taken off death row for a variety of reasons, the DOC reports. Most have seen their death sentences reversed and were resentenced to life in prison.

At least two men recently taken off death row were put there by Caddo Parish juries. In one case, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled prosecutors made a mistake and ordered a new trial. Robert Coleman, accused of the 2003 slaying of retired minister Julian Brandon during a Blanchard home invasion, is scheduled to again stand trial in April 2010. His girlfriend, Brandy Holmes, also earned a death sentence for her role in the crime.

In the other Caddo case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a sentencing was unconstitutional. Richard L. Davis, who was found guilty and sentenced to death for the rape of a 5-year-old girl, was resentenced to life in prison.

Nationwide, 135 death row inmates have been exonerated, according to Death Penalty Information Center statistics.

Fewer prosecutions

As a result of those and other factors, prosecutors are seeking death sentences less frequently. Faced with higher costs, the need for a unanimous jury verdict and a lengthy, expensive appeals process, they instead are opting for life sentences with no parole. Today there are 4,280 life inmates in Louisiana's state prisons.

An estimated 111 death sentences were meted out in 2008 across the country — part of a continual decline since 1998. In Louisiana, nearly half of the inmates on death row were sent there by three parishes — East Baton Rouge, Caddo and Jefferson. Between 2000 and 2008, those same parishes also had the most death row commitments in the state. Orleans Parish, which has the highest per capita murder rate in the nation, had not sentenced anyone to death in at least 12 years until August.

"There are parts of Louisiana that are very pro-death, but more than half the parishes in this state have never returned a death penalty," said Richard Bourke, director of the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center in New Orleans. "The death penalty in this state is driven by a small number of individually, locally-elected officials."

A colorful history

Hanging was the means of execution in Louisiana until 1941. The last man legally hanged in Louisiana was William Landers, who was executed in 1941 — barely six months after he and three other escaped Arkansas convicts killed a posse man sent to capture them.

Jury selection for the quartet's trial was hampered due to public sentiment against giving the death penalty to all four men when it was likely only one, Frank Boyce, actually was responsible for the murder, according to a 2001 article written by Foster.

That's not the only time the state's death penalty has met societal pressure, according to LSU-Shreveport criminal justice professor Bernadette Palombo.

During the penalty trial of Timothy Taylor, who was found guilty of first-degree murder in the 1999 shooting death of a Shreveport car salesman, defense attorneys and his parents pleaded with jurors to spare his life, Palombo said.

A man whose daughter was one of the 168 victims of the Oklahoma City bombing carried out by Timothy McVeigh spoke on Taylor's behalf, asking the jury not to give the death penalty. The man, who spoke as a representative of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, also was seeking to stop McVeigh's execution. Ultimately, Taylor was given life in prison. His co-defendant, Michael Taylor, no relation, received the death penalty a year earlier.

Others have expressed satisfaction in the state's death penalty. After the 2002 execution of Martin, the parents of his victim, Christina Burgin, said they were "ecstatic" over his death, news reports at the time stated.

Louisiana State Penitentiary Warden Burl Cain, who was at Martin's side when he died, said he feels compassion for the families of death row inmates but his thoughts focus on the victims and their families.

"I think about the victims," Cain said of what goes through his mind while sharing a last meal and standing by an inmate, sometimes holding his hand, as he is executed. "I wish I could have helped the victims. I wish I could have stopped (the victim's murder)."

After the state's last hanging, Louisiana switched to the electric chair. The oak chair, which was transported to the parish where the execution was to take place for nearly 16 years, was the method of choice from 1941 to 1991. The electric chair found a permanent home at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in 1957.

In that chair is where the only woman to be executed in Louisiana met her end. Toni Jo Henry, a Shreveporter, was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1940 killing of a 41-year-old tire salesman from Houston. She was executed on Nov. 28, 1942, in Lake Charles.

Two women, including Brandy Holmes, of Shreveport, sit on death row today. Both are housed at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel. Holmes' latest appeal is before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The other woman, former New Orleans police officer Antoinette Frank, saw her pending December 2008 execution for a 1995 triple homicide canceled by the Louisiana Supreme Court just weeks before she would have received a lethal injection.

In 1967, all executions nationwide were suspended pending a final decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately struck down the death penalty. All death row inmates at that time were resentenced to life imprisonment, according to DOC records.

The state resumed executions in 1983 and switched to lethal injections in 1991.

Cain, who has led six of the seven men executed by lethal injection to their deaths, said the prison's method of execution, which offers the condemned a last meal of choice and time with families, offers dignity. He wishes more could be done for the victims and their families.

"You do what you can where you are," Cain said.

Source: Shreveporttimes.com, October 9, 2009

Biden on Capital Punishment

Biden is credited for authoring several significant pieces of legislation in the area of federal law enforcement, including The Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement Act of 1994, widely known as the Biden Law, which:

- Banned the manufacture of 19 specific semiautomatic "assault weapons"

- Allocated more money to build prisons & set up bootcamps for delinquent minors

- Designated 50 new federal offenses, including gang membership, and created several new federal death penalty offenses, including murders related to drug dealing, drive-by shooting murders, civil rights-related murders, murders of federal law enforcement officers, and death caused by acts of terrorism or weapons of mass destruction.

The law was passed shortly before the Oklahom City bombing, and its provisions were applied to execute Timothy McVeigh. The legislation received bipartisan support, but was reviled by death penalty opponents and civil libertarians. Some believe it broke ground for the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001.

More on Biden on Death Penalty:

Joe Biden on crime

Joe Biden on Civil Liberties

A Supreme Court Boost for Suicide?

When the Supreme Court ruled last month that lethal injection didn't constitute cruel and unusual punishment, there was rejoicing from a peculiar interest group: death row inmates who have been trying to get the state to kill them quickly.

Many legal observers saw the court's decision as a victory for those who see the death penalty appeals process as a seemingly endless and cynical abuse of the system. (Death row appeals had been taking an average of approximately 12 years even before the seven-month national moratorium on executions preceding the decision.) But it was also a victory for that subset of prisoners who have waived all their appeals, fired their lawyers and written letters to governors begging for an execution date. These "volunteers" constitute 11% of executions nationwide, and will continue to dominate both the headlines and the execution schedules (8 of the last 16 executions in Florida have been volunteers) long after this ruling. Volunteers are a byproduct of the tortuous slowness of the process, and the court's narrow finding ultimately will do little to speed up the works.

Gary Gilmore, the first man executed after the death penalty resumed in 1976, was a volunteer. So were infamous inmates like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and serial murderer Aileen Wuornos. Exactly three years ago a Connecticut serial killer named Michael Ross became the first man executed in New England in four decades after clamoring loudly for his own death. In each instance the volunteers hijacked the justice system, and Ross's case was no different: he engaged in a long and public opera of narcissism, self-pity, and, in essence, self-promotion. His victims were all but forgotten. The state was no longer in control of the timing or even outcome of the sentencing. It became all about Ross.

Volunteers make all sides of the debate uncomfortable. Death penalty supporters are uneasy with the idea that some prisoners may see their death sentence as a relief from a tortured life. Anti-death penalty activists are discomfited by anyone who doesn't want their solidarity, much less their legal help. The courts don't want their appeals process short-circuited by the inmates' suicidal ideations.

So it's a bad sign for justice that last week, in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, Kentucky death row inmate Marco Allen Chapman announced again that he wants to his lawyers to stop fighting for his life. "I guess it's kind of my Christian upbringing," he told an AP reporter. "Suicide is unforgivable. I figure if I'm not doing it to myself, it's not a suicide." The Beltway sniper John Allen Muhammed also raised his hand briefly, asking in a letter for the state to go ahead and "murder this innocent black man." (He later reversed course and said through his lawyers he would continue to appeal his sentence.)

Why are there so many volunteers? The main reason is that the process has become so interminable that death, to some, seems a better choice than life in appeals. The death penalty was originally designed to be carried out in three to six months, and housing and services for inmates were accordingly shabby, meant for a transient population. "Nobody wants to spend money on a dead man," is how Robert Nave, who helps coordinate Amnesty International's Program to Abolish the Death Penalty, puts it. And yet the process has become so sclerotic that execution is now just the third most common cause of death on California's death row. Prisoners there are more likely to die of natural causes or by suicide in their cell than by lethal injection. If the D.C. Madam committed suicide to evade a potentially brief jail term in comparative comfort, the same option must be far more attractive to those facing a dozen years or more on death row.

The Supreme Court ruling has had some immediate effect: those who were near their dates before the seven-month moratorium are now being quickly lined up for execution. Georgia put murderer William Earl Lynd to death on May 6. But this resolution of the lethal injection fight won't speed up the system in the long run. There will still be a deep well of public and legal opposition that will fund new challenges to capital punishment, just as there were decades of challenges and moratoriums long before questions arose about lethal injection.

In fact, the death penalty is dying its own de facto death in most places around the country, due to concerns about everything from death row exonerations to the high costs of capital punishment. As Nave points out, since the start of the 1990s, the number of death sentences handed out and actual executions have declined, as have the number of death-eligible crimes being charged. Death row populations themselves have also dwindled, through commutation and attrition as much as through actual execution. New Jersey abolished the death penalty outright last fall, while other states have simply stopped exercising it.

As it loses momentum around the country, the wait times become longer and the resources to speed the appeals process becomes scarcer, the ones who are actually put to death will increasingly be the ones who beg for their own execution. It's a vision of the future of justice that should make everyone uncomfortable.

Source: Time.com

Member of Missouri Execution Team Had Criminal Past; Also Participated in Federal Executions

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch recently revealed that a Missouri man who was entrusted with state and federal executions had a criminal past. The man, a licensed nurse who was called to Indiana in 2001 to assist in the federal execution of Timothy McVeigh, first needed permission from his probation officer before leaving the state.

In 1998, the Missouri executioner was charged with felony aggravated stalking and first-degree tampering with property of a man who was having a relationship with the executioner's estranged wife. He pleaded no contest, was convicted of misdemeanor stalking and tampering with property, and was placed on probation. Memos obtained by the Post-Dispatch showed that state and federal officials knew of the executioner’s conviction and probation status, and they still wanted to use him.

At least one supervisor in the Missouri Division of Probation and Parole was alarmed by the federal request of a man who was on probation to aid in an execution. She wrote, "As I stated to you previously, it seems bizarre to me that we would knowingly allow an offender, on active supervision, to participate in the execution process at any level." The man was permitted to make the trip.

Missouri has had difficulty finding medically skilled executioners in the past, especially because the American Medical Association has an ethical guideline against doctors participating in executions.

In Kansas City in 2006, however, the doctor who helped to develop Missouri’s execution procedure and oversaw 54 executions, testified that he was dyslexic and often had problems mixing the correct proportions and amounts of the lethal drugs. The doctor, who had testified anonymously, was later identified by a Post-Dispatch investigation, leading to the creation of a Missouri law designed to protect the identities of current or former executioners and to allow them to seek damages in civil court if their names are revealed. When asked about the criminal past of the Missouri executioner, Deborah Denno, a Fordham University law professor and expert on methods of execution, stated, "It suggests security is not the reason for not revealing their identities. They have other reasons, and the reasons are that these people have troubled behavioral and emotional histories."

“Execution nurse had criminal past,” by Jeremy Kohler, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 12, 2008