Death Penalty Alternatives for Arizona

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Sign the Petition to Stop the AZ Killing Spree Before it Starts!

April 15, 2021 by Kevin Heade

On April 6, 2021, it was reported that State Attorney General Mark Brnovich has asked the Arizona Supreme Court to issue execution warrants for two death-row inmates in what would be the state’s first executions in almost seven years.

Arizona put executions on hold after the 2014 death of Joseph Wood, who was given 15 doses of a two-drug combination over two hours. His attorney said the execution was botched. In fact, Arizona has badly botched four executions in as many years.  

To resume executions, while the majority of states have abandoned the death penalty in either law or practice, is in direct opposition to the evolving standards of decency in our country. Also, it turns out the state spent over $1 million to procure drugs for executions, even as so many of its citizens are suffering the economic impacts of the pandemic.

Furthermore, it is important to note that Black people account for just 5.2 percent of the state’s population, but 16 percent of the state’s 116-person death row. Arizona has sentenced nearly a quarter of all Native Americans facing the death penalty in the United States.

Please sign this petition to let officials in Arizona know that resuming executions is the wrong thing to do.

Filed Under: News and Events

Death Penalty News Feed

October 2, 2020 by Kevin Heade

Death Penalty News

  • Lesflicks Celebrates Lesbian Day Of Visibility With The Addition Of 5 Lesbian Feature Film Releases April 20, 2021 12:22 am Scoop Lesflicks Celebrates Lesbian Day of Visibility with the addition of 5 Lesbian Feature Film Releases to Boost WLW Representation on Screen and making Lesflicks VOD the largest dedicated collection of WLW series, features and shorts in the world! Lesflicks …
  • Triple-homicide suspect Stephen Broderick jailed; wife, daughter, promising football player among victims April 20, 2021 12:02 am Abilene Reporter News - Texas Austin police investigators say a scheduled custody visit Sunday led to a vehicle collision in a Northwest Austin apartment complex and escalated into gun violence. Authorities charged Stephen Broderick, 41, with shooting and killing his wife, 35-year-old  …
  • 2nd week of alleged serial killer's trial could include references to Hitler, cleansing April 19, 2021 11:54 pm The Advocate Jurors will return Monday for the second week of a trial for a Baton Rouge man accused of targeting and gunning down two Black men in a streak of violence in 2017 that began when Kenneth Gleason allegedly fired into a Black family’s home. Kenneth Gleason …
  • At alleged serial killer's trial, witness describes shooting of Louie's Cafe worker in a park April 19, 2021 11:53 pm The Advocate A former LSU student testified Monday that he watched in horror the night of Sept. 14, 2017, as a man made a u-turn in front of a BREC park just north of the Baton Rouge campus and fatally shot a beloved Louie's Cafe employee. Ka'wesley Brown told …
  • AP: Valley Jury Convicts Woman In Arabella Parker Case April 19, 2021 11:42 pm WKOK - Pennsylvania SUNBURY, Pa. (AP) — AP is reporting…A Northumberland County jury has convicted a woman of lying to investigators in the 2019 beating death of a 3-year-old girl in which her son faces charges. The (Sunbury) Daily Item reports that 51-year-old Christy Willis …
  • Judge Grants Robert Bowers Attorneys 90-Day Extension To File Pre-Trial Motions April 19, 2021 11:40 pm CBS 2 Pittsburgh - Pennsylvania By: KDKA-TV News Staff PITTSBURGH (KDKA) – A judge has granted another delay in the trial of the accused Tree of Life synagogue shooter Robert Bowers. His defense attorneys submitted a request for more time on Sunday, asking for a 90-day extension to file …
  • My Daddy’s Going To Change The World April 19, 2021 11:29 pm The Seattle Medium By Dr. E. Faye Williams (Trice Edney Wire) – “My Daddy!” are two words which, arguably, identify the second most important person in the life of a child.  Sometimes he is the most important.  For many, “Daddy” is the first word spoken and, from all of my …
  • Advocates, editorials call on Biden to end federal death penalty April 19, 2021 10:27 pm The Catholic Sun - Arizona WASHINGTON (CNS) — The death penalty has been getting attention across the country this year with legislation introduced or voted on in several states aimed at limiting, repealing or even renewing capital punishment. These discussions in state capitols, …
  • Nevada Assembly votes to abolish death penalty in historic move; bills future uncertain in Senate April 19, 2021 9:01 pm Nevada State News Members of the Assembly voted on party lines Tuesday to advance a bill abolishing the death penalty, pushing the concept further than ever in the state even though its prospects are in question in the Senate. AB395 was approved on a 26-16 vote, with all …
  • Earlier sentences affected by life ban April 19, 2021 7:33 pm Tribune Chronicle - Ohio Staff file photo / R. Michael Semple Jacob LaRosa, center, looks back at his attorney David Rouzzo, right, while being led away from court by Trumbull County sheriffs after being sentenced Oct. 12, 2018, by Common Pleas Judge W. Wyatt McKay for the …
  • As ICUs fill up, doctors confront grim choice of who gets life-saving care April 19, 2021 5:52 pm CBC/Radio-Canada Hospitals are shifting critically ill patients around, looking for any empty bed. Nurses and doctors are putting in exhaustion-defying amounts of overtime. Some provinces are opening new intensive care unit capacity. But it may not be enough to stave off a …
  • LA Sheriff Blames ‘Defund the Police,’ Progressive Policies for Spike in Violent Crime April 19, 2021 3:56 pm The Epoch Times Violent crime has soared in Los Angeles County this year because criminals have been emboldened by progressive law enforcement policies as well as the “defund the police” movement, the county’s sheriff says. Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva said …
  • Pakistan: TLP protesters free abducted policemen after violence April 19, 2021 2:01 pm Al Jazeera Islamabad, Pakistan – Protesters belonging to Pakistan’s far-right Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan (TLP) group have released 11 police officers abducted during violent clashes in the eastern city of Lahore, the country’s interior minister says, as negotiations …
  • What lies behind Tehreek-e-Labaik Pakistan’s challenge to the state? April 19, 2021 1:35 pm CanIndia News Pakistan’s government has been put under a severe challenge and test by an Islamist party, which has wrecked havoc in the country this week with its anti-France protests, demanding the government to expel the French Ambassador and cut all relations with …
  • Singapore says it makes biggest cannabis seizure in 25 years April 19, 2021 12:23 pm Mint SINGAPORE: Singapore's anti-narcotics agency said on Monday it made its biggest seizure of cannabis in 25 years in a bust last week in the city-state, which has some of the world's toughest narcotics laws including capital punishment. The Central …

Filed Under: News and Events

ATTORNEY STATEMENT AND CASE BACKGROUND RE: ATTORNEY GENERAL SEEKS EXECUTION DATE FOR FRANK ATWOOD DESPITE GRAVE DOUBTS ABOUT HIS CONVICTION

April 10, 2021 by Kevin Heade

(April 6, 2021) Today, the Arizona Attorney General took steps to request execution dates from the Arizona Supreme Court, including for Frank Atwood. The State is attempting to begin the execution process for Mr. Atwood, despite open legal issues—including whether he is innocent—that need resolution to ensure any measure of reliability in this conviction and death sentence.

Mr. Atwood was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1984 murder of eight-year- old Vicki Lynne Hoskinson. Eyewitnesses reported seeing the child alive hours after the only time Mr. Atwood could have crossed paths with her. Yet the authorities zeroed in on Mr. Atwood, carrying out an investigation riddled with flaws and lacking in concrete evidence connecting him to the victim’s disappearance, let alone her death.

Below is a statement from Joseph Perkovich, an attorney for Mr. Atwood:

“Frank Atwood’s litigation since early 2020 has been frustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic.


The State is now attempting to sweep aside the most profound issues that can arise in our legal system, including whether the convicted is actually guilty of the crime and whether death is a morally or legally tenable punishment in the individual’s case. Mr. Atwood needs the opportunity to present these issues before the Arizona Supreme Court entertains setting an
execution date.”

  • Joseph Perkovich, Attorney for Frank Atwood
  • April 6, 2021

BACKGROUND ON FRANK ATWOOD’S CASE

In September 1984, Frank Atwood and a fellow-traveler were passing through Tucson when an eight-year-old girl, Vicki Lynne Hoskinson, disappeared while riding her bicycle.

Hours later, long after Mr. Atwood supposedly committed this crime, multiple witnesses spotted the girl at the Tucson Mall. But a tip put Mr. Atwood in the same neighborhood that afternoon.


As soon as police learned of his California convictions for child sex-related offenses, they dropped all other investigations, and he was soon arrested. He answered officers’ questions and consented to a search of his car. No evidence of the victim was found.

Seven months later, some of the girl’s bones were found off the side of Ina Road, an arterial avenue. Long after Mr. Atwood’s trial, it emerged that these remains had been buried before they appeared on the desert floor.

The prosecution’s evidence showed there was nowhere near enough time for Mr. Atwood to have abducted, killed, and buried the victim.

Evidence later emerged that the State manufactured its only physical evidence connecting Mr. Atwood to the child – supposed contact between his car and her bicycle — but the courts have yet to get to the truth of that matter. That evidence has never been subjected to modern scientific
testing.

Mr. Atwood, the son of a Holocaust survivor, is now wheelchair-bound and suffering from severe spinal deterioration among other medical problems that would make the process of executing him excruciatingly painful.

For more information, contact Joseph Perkovich, j.perkovich@phillipsblack.org.

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

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