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Death Penalty News Feed

October 2, 2020 by Kevin Heade

Death Penalty News

  • Europe MPs express concern about human rights in Bahrain January 24, 2021 11:06 am News (South Africa) More than a dozen European lawmakers issue letter to demand Gulf nation uphold commitment to human rights. Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have issued a letter urging Bahraini authorities to abide by the country’s commitment and release prisoners …
  • Authorities Investigate Early-Morning Explosion at Anti-Gay SoCal Church January 24, 2021 10:00 am CBS News Bay Area - California LOS ANGELES (CBS/AP) — The FBI and local police are investigating an explosion early Saturday at a Los Angeles-area church that had been the target of protests for its anti-LGBT message. Officers responding around 4:30 a.m. initially thought a vandal …
  • Deliberations resume Monday in the trial of Marco Garcia-Bravo accused of killing two Colorado Springs teens January 24, 2021 9:36 am Fox 21 News - Colorado COLORADO SPRINGS — A verdict has yet to be reached in the case against Marco Garcia-Bravo who is accused of killing two Colorado Springs teenagers back in 2017. Garcia-Bravo’s trial is the only jury trial that was exempt from being vacated due to COVID-19 …
  • Suggestions on draft Shakti Bill: Experts says many provisions already exist, need to strengthen prevailing laws January 24, 2021 9:26 am The Indian Express With the state legislature’s joint selection committee inviting submissions from expert groups and lawyers on the proposed Shakti Act, a criticism voiced before the panel is that instead of coming up with new provisions, the need is to strengthen the laws …
  • S Korea gripped by trial of toddler Jeong-in's killer January 24, 2021 1:21 am Taipei News.net A video clip shows a healthy, happy child smiling from ear to ear, her milk teeth gnawing at a pink fluffy toy. Within months, all of South Korea would know Jeong-in. It has taken the death of a 16-month-old, allegedly at the hands of her adoptive parents, …
  • Study by Project 39A: ‘65% death penalties by trial courts linked to sexual crimes… highest in 5 years’ January 24, 2021 1:04 am The Indian Express Corresponding to the legislative expansion of death penalty for sexual crimes against women, more than 65 per cent of all death sentences imposed by trial courts were linked to such cases in 2020, the annual study in death penalty in India by Project 39A — …
  • Nesi's Notes: Jan. 23 January 24, 2021 12:28 am WPRI 12 - Rhode Island Happy Saturday! Here’s another edition of my weekend column for WPRI.com — as always, send your takes, tips and trial balloons to tnesi@wpri.com and follow me on Twitter and on Facebook. 1. Rhode Island government — or at least the Rhode Island governor’s …
  • Virginia moves toward banning capital punishment, in a shift for prolific death penalty state January 23, 2021 11:55 pm The Washington Post The former capital of the Confederacy would become the first Southern state to abolish capital punishment if a bill on track to pass the Senate gets out of the House and over to the desk of Gov. Ralph Northam (D), who has promised to sign it. A ban in …
  • Only five years? January 23, 2021 10:33 pm Scoop January 23, 2021 7:00am by David Farrar Stuff reports: An Auckland man has been jailed for five years after he tried to buy a girl under the age of 7 for sexual exploitation. Aaron Joseph Hutton hid behind the profile name ‘kiwipedo’ on the secretive Dark …
  • Squad members urge Biden to commute the sentence of every death row inmate January 23, 2021 9:13 pm Fox News Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what's clicking on FoxNews.com. All 49 remaining death-row inmates in federal prisons should have their sentences commuted by President Biden, two members of the progressive "Squad" group of …
  • Biden urged to commute sentences of all 49 federal death row prisoners January 23, 2021 8:53 pm The Guardian Led by two prominent African American congresswomen, 35 Democrats have urged Joe Biden to commute the sentences of all 49 federal prisoners left on death row – days after the Trump administration finished its rush to kill 13 such prisoners. Early last …
  • Police are investigating an overnight explosion at a suburban Los Angeles church January 23, 2021 8:09 pm CNN Police were called to First Works Baptist Church in El Monte around 1 a.m. where they found the walls of the church vandalized and smoke coming out of the church's window, which appeared to be smashed in. "We realized that the windows were not …
  • Authorities investigate blast at anti-gay California church January 23, 2021 6:36 pm The Washington Times EL MONTE, Calif. (AP) - The FBI and local police are investigating an explosion early Saturday at a Los Angeles-area church that had been the target of protests for its anti-LGTBQ message. Officers responding around 4:30 a.m. initially thought a vandal had …
  • Indiana inmate agrees to plead guilty in inmate’s killing January 23, 2021 4:48 pm The Republic - Indiana ANDERSON, Ind. — An inmate at a central Indiana prison has agreed to plead guilty in the fatal stabbing of another inmate, four months after he rejected the same plea agreement. Tommy Holland’s defense attorney told a Madison County judge Monday his client …
  • Family jolted by killer’s confession January 23, 2021 2:18 pm The Gleaner If Keshtina Bonner had her way, confessed killer Wade Blackwood would spend the rest of his life behind bars for the horrific shooting death of her sister, Simone Campbell-Collymore. Blackwood detailed, in a caution statement recorded by police …

Filed Under: News and Events

Symposium: Ginsburg, the death penalty and strategic gradualism

October 5, 2020 by Kevin Heade

From www.Scotusblog.com

This article is part of a symposium on the jurisprudence of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Jeffrey L. Kirchmeier is a professor of law at CUNY Law School and author of Imprisoned by the Past: Warren McCleskey, Race, and the American Death Penalty.

When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1993, she had never ruled in a death penalty case. She brought to the court her experience both as an attorney protecting oppressed groups and as a court of appeals judge who embraced judicial moderation. During the subsequent years, her support for individual rights and her judicial moderation informed her approach to capital punishment amid growing societal concerns about the unfairness of the death penalty system.

In both public statements and her votes, Ginsburg recognized problems with the implementation of the death penalty. For example, during a lecture in Maryland in 2001, she discussed poor legal representation of capital defendants and stated that she was “glad to see” Maryland pass an execution moratorium bill. In 2011, she told law students that she hoped the court one day would hold that “the death penalty could not be administered with an even hand.” Despite those concerns, Ginsburg, taking a methodical approach, never wrote an opinion declaring the death penalty unconstitutional in all cases.

Some justices have taken the broader position. Justices Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan rejected the return of the death penalty in the 1970s by reasoning that capital punishment violates the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution. Marshall and Brennan dissented in every case upholding a capital sentence through the rest of their careers.

Other justices later took that position near or at the end of their judicial careers. In February 1994, during Ginsburg’s first term on the court, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote a dissenting opinion concluding that the death penalty is unconstitutional. Around that same time, former Justice Lewis Powell revealed he regretted his votes upholding the death penalty. Similarly, and also during Ginsburg’s time on the court, Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in 2008 that the death penalty is “patently excessive and cruel and unusual punishment violative of the Eighth Amendment.”

Unlike those justices, Ginsburg was not on the Supreme Court for the landmark death penalty decisions upholding the modern death penalty in the 1970s and 1980s, such as Gregg v. Georgia and McCleskey v. Kemp. As a law professor, she co-authored an amicus brief for the American Civil Liberties Union in the important 1977 case on capital punishment and sexual assault, Coker v. Georgia. But her judicial experience with the death penalty largely spanned a time of declining executions, and that backdrop may have helped guide her to a more gradual approach of working with her colleagues at chipping away at capital punishment rather than sweeping broadly.

Her approach to capital punishment cases grew from a thoughtful strategic decision. She believed she could be more influential by participating directly in the court’s decisions analyzing capital punishment rather than by taking a broad position that the death penalty always violated the Constitution. Although some criticized her approach, her careful analysis drew respect from her colleagues, with justices on the other side of a case sometimes acknowledging the logic of her reasoning.

So, even though Ginsburg declared to an audience in 2017, “If I were queen, there would be no death penalty,” she approached the death penalty not as a monarch, but as a jurist, carefully carving away with a scalpel to expose the problems she saw with America’s system of executing people. She relied on precedent to try to ensure capital sentencing followed the constitutional demands that procedures be fair and reliable, while enforcing the court’s proclamations that death sentences differ from other punishments. Her approach to capital punishment was similar to her approach to other constitutional criminal procedure cases, which as illustrating a “preference for narrow rulings that adhere closely to precedent and that avoid grand pronouncements.”

During Ginsburg’s career, she did sometimes vote to uphold death sentences. But generally her written opinions and votes tended to be on the side of the condemned. Her majority decisions included Shafer v. South Carolina, involving jury instructions on the alternative of life without parole sentences, and Ring v. Arizona, in which the court held that the Sixth Amendment right to a jury required juries, not judges, to determine “aggravating factors” that would justify a death sentence.

In capital cases in which she did not write an opinion, Ginsburg’s vote was often crucial. During this century, she voted in the majority of every 5-4 Supreme Court decision in favor of capital defendants. She cast important votes striking capital punishment for people with intellectual disabilities, for juveniles and for defendants in cases in which nobody was killed.

Ginsburg also played a key role in lower-profile cases, often voting to grant stays of executions or deny applications to vacate stays. In recent years since the Death Penalty Information Center began keeping track of the statistic, no capital defendant received a stay of execution without her vote.

Despite her careful jurisprudence, Ginsburg saw broader problems with the death penalty, including limits on habeas corpus, failures to protect innocent defendants and unequal treatment based on race and other factors. She brought to her capital punishment jurisprudence her compassion for people tossed aside by society. For instance, she wrote poignantly of the risk of pain and suffering during executions in her dissenting opinion in Baze v. Rees.

Toward the end of her life, Ginsburg’s long experience led her further. Although she never wrote a sweeping opinion concluding that the death penalty in all cases is unconstitutional, her colleague Justice Stephen Breyer in 2015 wrote a dissenting opinion in Glossip v. Gross, asking that the court request briefing on “whether the death penalty violates the Constitution.” The long dissent documented numerous reasons it is “highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment.” No other justice joined the dissent and the call to reassess the constitutionality of the death penalty … except for Ginsburg. And in July of this year, she again joined Breyer in questioning the constitutionality of the death penalty.

While we may only speculate what would have happened had the court taken up the issue, through Ginsburg’s careful and reasoned approach in her death penalty jurisprudence, she provided a bold voice for moderating and challenging the American system of capital punishment. Her votes and analysis created an important record that remains, even as the sudden absence of her voice protecting the powerless has left a gaping hole on the court. All who care about fairness, justice and equality will miss her.

Posted in Featured, Symposium on Justice Ginsburg’s jurisprudence

Recommended Citation: Jeffrey Kirchmeier, Symposium: Ginsburg, the death penalty and strategic gradualism, SCOTUSblog (Oct. 5, 2020, 9:43 AM), https://www.scotusblog.com/2020/10/symposium-ginsburg-the-death-penalty-and-strategic-gradualism/

Filed Under: News and Events

10 Things You Can Do For World Against Death Penalty Day – October 10, 2020

October 2, 2020 by Kevin Heade

The 18th Annual World Against the Death Penalty Day falls on Saturday, October 10, 2020.

Here are some ideas for organizing (courtesy of World Coalition Against the Death Penalty)

1. Organize a demonstration.
2. Organize a gathering on a videoconference platform. It can take the shape of a webinar, remote workshop, conversation, a public debate or even a virtual film screening to create awareness.
3. Coordinate a letter/email writing campaign.
4. Participate in a TV show or with a community radio station.
5.  Organize an art exhibition (of artwork made by people sentenced to death, of photographs of death row, of drawings or posters) or a [virtual] theatre performance.
6.  Join the events prepared for the abolition of the death penalty worldwide.
7.  Donate to a group working to end the death penalty.
8.  Follow the social media campaign on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter: use #nodeathpenalty or click here to tweet against capital punishment!
9. Mobilize the media to raise awareness on the issue of the death penalty.
10. Participate in “Cities Against the Death Penalty/Cities for Life” on 30 November 2020.

http://www.worldcoalition.org/worldday.html

Filed Under: News and Events

Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona Holds Vigil for Lezmond Mitchell – Navajo Nation member, only Native American on federal death row, set to be executed August 26, 2020.

October 2, 2020 by Kevin Heade

https://www.azcentral.com/picture-gallery/news/local/arizona/2020/08/26/vigil-lezmond-mitchell-only-native-american-death-row-downtown-phoenix/3441219001/

Filed Under: News and Events

OP ED The only Native American on federal death row is scheduled for execution. He shouldn’t be.

October 2, 2020 by Kevin Heade

By Dan Peitzmeyer and Kevin Heade – Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona

Published August 23, 2020 at AZCentral.Com

Lezmond Mitchell, a member of the Navajo Nation, is scheduled to be executed on Aug. 26 for crimes committed on the Navajo reservation against other tribal members.

President Trump and Attorney General William Barr chose to include Mitchell among the first five federal death row inmates to be executed in 17 years.

Mitchell is the only Native American on federal death row.

Politics put Lezmond Mitchell on death row

He was put there through a politically motivated prosecution. The U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, Paul Charlton, elected not to seek the death penalty. Presumably, this decision was made because the Navajo Nation chose not to opt in to the Federal Death Penalty Act (FDPA) to allow the death penalty in federal prosecutions of its tribal members under the Major Crimes Act.

However, in 2002, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft overruled Charlton’s decision and insisted that Mitchell be sentenced to death under a loophole to the FDPA’s opt-in requirement by seeking a death sentence for carjacking, a federal crime of national applicability.

President Jonathan Nez of the Navajo Nation has appealed to Trump to respect the culture, tradition, values and sovereignty of the Navajo Nation by commuting Mitchell’s sentence to life in prison. 

Judge Andrew Hurwitz of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (and former vice chief justice of the Arizona Supreme Court) has opined that just because the death sentence in Mitchell’s case is legal, it “does not necessarily make it right.” Several members of the victims’ family also oppose putting Mitchell to death. 

Those familiar with Arizona history understand the unique relationship that Native Americans have with the federal government.

Tribal sovereignty and culture should be respected. It is an affront to the Navajo Nation to execute Lezmond Mitchell.

Science, law also support commutation

If President Trump needs more reasons to grant mercy, the advances in law and psychology merit a commutation of Mitchell’s death sentence.

Mitchell was 20 years old in 2001 when he and his accomplice committed their crimes.

The United States Supreme Court has since ruled that the Eighth Amendment prohibits the death penalty for juveniles and limits life sentences for juveniles to extreme circumstances where the defendant cannot be rehabilitated.

Yet, there is scientific consensus that the legal age of 18 is an arbitrary demarcation between youth and adulthood. Developmental maturity does not occur until the age of 25 or later. 

President Trump should consider this science.

Trump has an opportunity to show that he understands his immense constitutional authority to commute federal death sentences.

Filed Under: News and Events

2018 Winter Newsletter

December 4, 2018 by Dennis Seavers

The winter newsletter is now available, featuring:

  • News from around the country about the death penalty;
  • An update on the decline in public support for the death penalty;
  • A reflection by Alan Tavassoli, the president of Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona;
  • And more…

Please click here to see our Winter 2018 newsletter and subscribe by joining our email list.

Filed Under: News and Events, Newsletter, Updates Tagged With: news, newsletter, opinion, updates

2018 Summer Newsletter – Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona

August 26, 2018 by Kevin Heade

Death Penalty Alternatives for AZ Summer 2018

Please see our Summer 2018 newsletter and subscribe by joining our email list.

Full Summer 2018 Newsletter pdf

AZ Death Penalty Alternatives Summer 2018 p1

AZ Death Penalty Alternatives Summer 2018 p2

AZ Death Penalty Alternatives Summer 2018 p3

AZ Death Penalty Alternatives Summer 2018 p4

 

 

 

Filed Under: Newsletter Tagged With: news, newsletter, newsletters, updates

Vigil & Rally for Exonerees at the Arizona Capital

April 26, 2018 by Kevin Heade

Vigil & Rally for Exonerees at the Arizona Capital

Join exonerees from death row at the Arizona Capital for a vigil and rally with guest speaker, Federal Public Defender Capital Habeas Unit, Dale Baich.

The rally is scheduled for May 4th. A screening of The Gathering with guest Florida State Attorney Aramis Ayala follows later in the evening at 7:30 PM at 5802 E. Lincoln Dr, Scottsdale, Az.

The event is sponsored by Witness to Innocence. The mission of WTI is to abolish the death penalty by empowering exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones to become effective leaders in the abolition movement.

Please respond to our Vigil and Rally Facebook event to receive updates and reminders about the event. Here is a link:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1750315075053995/

Here is a link to our screening event Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/events/240535156523590/

We look forward to joining you in solidarity for justice. Please send inquiries to info@azdeathpenalty.org.

Filed Under: News and Events

29 Years for 13 Seconds

January 17, 2018 by Dennis Seavers

Special performance of “29 Years For 13 Seconds: The Injustices of Justice”, sponsored by Interfaith CommUNITY Spiritual Center and Death Penalty Alternatives of Arizona.

At 16 years old, Vance “Duke” Webster witnessed two friends commit a crime. When refused to “snitch” he was sentenced to life in prison. A one-act play based on a true story, “29 Years For 13 Seconds” is less about Webster’s time in prison and more about how women, religion and social services have created wild waves that he rides without the slightest hint of resentment. Don’t believe it? Come check it out. One night only, 7 p.m., Friday, January 19, 2018, 952 E. Baseline Rd, #102, Mesa, AZ.

NOTE: A suggested love offering of $10 will be collected the night of the show. You may also pre-purchase tickets

Filed Under: News and Events, Updates Tagged With: news, updates

Arizona ends automatic solitary confinement of death-row inmates

January 5, 2018 by Dennis Seavers

From the Death Penalty Information Center:

Several months after Arizona settled a lawsuit over the conditions of confinement on the state’s death row, the state has ended the practice of automatically housing condemned prisoners in solitary confinement, and prisoners and prison officials alike are praising the changes.

Carson McWilliams

Carson McWilliams

Carson McWilliams (pictured right), Division Director for Offender Operations in the Arizona Department of Corrections (ADC), told the Arizona Republic that the new incarceration conditions provide an “atmosphere where [prisoners] can socialize,” resulting in “reduce[d] anxiety” that, in turn, “adds to safety control” of the prison. And, prison officials say, it has reduced institutional costs.

Prior to the lawsuit, death row had meant 23-hour-per-day confinement in a concrete cell the size of a parking space, shuttered by a steel door with a perforated slot through which the prisoners would receive their meals, and with a bench bed and a sink attached to an uncovered toilet. Prisoners had no contact visits with families or lawyers, were handcuffed behind the back and subjected to body-cavity searches whenever they left their cells, and were restricted to showering or exercising three times a week. They also were denied prison jobs and educational opportunities. About the solitary conditions, McWilliams remarked, “The more you’re restricted inside a cell, the more likely you are to have depression, to have anxiety, to have other types of mental problems that could lead to some type of problem inside the system, whether its self harm, or suicide, or aggression towards a staff member or towards another inmate.”

One death-row prisoner who was interviewed by the paper said, “It’s hard to explain the deprivation. . . . It weighs on your mind.” McWilliams said it now requires fewer officers to manage death row because officers no longer have to deliver individual meals or individually escort each of the 120 prisoners. Kevin Curran, who has been a prison warden at various facilities run by the ADC, said that he “feels safer among the death-row men than among the career criminals and gangsters in the general population.” Under the new conditions, prisoners are able to socialize with each other in activities such as playing basketball, volleyball, or board games, and can eat meals together. One ADC corrections officer told the Arizona Republic that he was “apprehensive” at first about the changes, but the transition has been “very good” with only a “few minor incidents,” which were “a lot less” than he expected.

(M. Kiefer, Arizona death row comes out of solitary, giving convicts more human contact, socialization, Arizona Republic, Dec. 19, 2017.)

Filed Under: Media, News and Events, Updates Tagged With: media, news, updates

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