Robbie Fulks--Musical Genius? Decide for Yourself on August 12th

Now the hour draws nigh, the last bell tolls

How heavy my chains, how still my soul

But somewhere in the dark, a newborn cries

And a mother looks down with love into a killer's eyes.

Turn away young man, from the siren's spell

Turn back from the path where only torment dwells

Heed well the tale of William Hayes

Born 35 years ago, and he'll hang today

Lyrics from "Cold Statesville Ground," a song that we'd appreciate more if it was an historical tale, rather than an assessment of our current community.

A Big Win in the US Supreme Court!

A divided Supreme Court on Thursday blocked the execution of a Texas killer whose lawyers argued that he should not be put to death because he is mentally ill.

The court ruled 5-4 in the case of Scott Louis Panetti, who shot his in-laws to death 15 years ago in front of his wife and young daughter.

The convicted murderer says that he suffers from a severe documented illness that is the source of gross delusions. "This argument, we hold, should have been considered," said Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion.

Panetti's lawyers wanted the court to determine that people who cannot understand the connection between their crime and punishment because of mental illness may not be executed.

The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution bars "the execution of a person who is so lacking in rational understanding that he cannot comprehend that he is being put to death because of the crime he was convicted of committing," they said in court papers.

Politicians Lag Behind the Public--A Majority Supports Moratorium

From the Death Penalty Information Center:

According to a national public opinion poll conducted in 2007,the public is losing confidence in the death penalty. People are deeply concerned about the risk of
executing the innocent, about the fairness of the process, and about
the inability of capital punishment to accomplish its basic purposes.
Most Americans believe that innocent people have already been executed, that the death penalty is not a deterrent to crime, and that a moratorium should be
placed on all executions.

The public's lack of confidence in the death penalty is being echoed by representatives of victims' groups, by former supporters of the death penalty,
and in the editorial pages of the nation's newspapers. Although the dissatisfaction with capital punishment has many roots, the common and principal concern
heard throughout the country is the risk that innocent people may be caught up with the guilty.

It is time that our elected representatives instituted our collective will--abolition now!

Lagging Behind Florida? Shame on Us!

The Florida Supreme Court recently reversed the Christopher Offord's death sentence based on his severe mental illness. Here's an excerpt from the opinion:

Offord's case is notable because it is one of the most documented cases of serious mental illness this Court has reviewed. Through the uncontradicted medical records, a picture emerges of an individual with two serious mental illnesses-schizophrenia and bipolar disorder-who has been in and out of institutions since he was just five or six years old. During a 2001 hospitalization in Texas, the staff considered Offord's prognosis poor and predicted that he would be unable to function well outside of a facility. This proved to be an accurate assessment because Offord was admitted to hospitals numerous times during 2002, 2003, and 2004. After coming to Florida, he was admitted to Bay Behavioral four times, the last on July 4, 2004, only weeks before the murder. In addition, Offord was receiving permanent social security disability payments because of his mental illness. Although Offord also has a substance abuse problem, his medical history indicates that his mental health significantly contributed to the murder.

As this Court observed over 34 years ago in Dixon:

It is necessary at the outset to bear in mind that all defendants who will face the issue of life imprisonment or death will already have been found guilty of a most serious crime, one which the Legislature has chosen to classify as capital. After his adjudication, this defendant is nevertheless provided with five steps between conviction and imposition of the death penalty-each step providing concrete safeguards beyond those of the trial system to protect him from death where a less harsh punishment might be sufficient.

The final step is the mandatory review by this Court, which we found was one indication of “legislative intent to extract the penalty of death for only the most aggravated, the most indefensible of crimes.” Id. at 8. For all the reasons we have explained, we conclude that this is not among “the most aggravated and unmitigated of most serious crimes” for which the death penalty is reserved. Id. at 7. Imposition of the death penalty would thus be a disproportionate punishment. We therefore vacate the death sentence and remand for the imposition of a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Come on Washington--if our evolving standards of decency lag behind Florida, we've got some catch up to do.

Lethal Injection--Not in My Name

Some Recent Examples of Botched Executions:

December 7, 2000. Texas. Claude Jones.
Jones was a former intravenous drug abuser. His execution was delayed 30 minutes while the execution "team" struggled to insert an IV into a vein. He had been a longtime intravenous drug user. One member of the execution team commented, "They had to stick him about five times. They finally put it in his leg." Wrote Jim Willett, the warden of the Walls Unit and the man responsible for conducting the execution, "The medical team could not find a vein. Now I was really beginning to worry. If you can't stick a vein then a cut-down has to be performed. I have never seen one and would just as soon go through the rest of my career the same way. Just when I was really getting worried, one of the medical people hit a vein in the left leg. Inside calf to be exact. The executioner had warned me not to panic as it was going to take a while to get the fluids in the body of the inmate tonight because he was going to push the drugs through very slowly. Finally, the drug took effect and Jones took his last breath."

June 28, 2000. Missouri. Bert Leroy Hunter
Hunter had an unusual reaction to the lethal drugs, repeatedly coughing and gasping for air before he lapsed into unconsciousness. An attorney who witnessed the execution reported that Hunter had "violent convulsions. His head and chest jerked rapidly upward as far as the gurney restraints would allow, and then he fell quickly down upon the gurney. His body convulsed back and forth like this repeatedly. ... He suffered a violent and agonizing death."

November 7, 2001. Georgia. Jose High.
High was pronounced dead some one hour and nine minutes after the execution began. After attempting to find a useable vein for 39 minutes, the emergency medical technicians under contract to do the execution abandoned their efforts. Eventually, one needle was stuck in High's hand, and a physician was called in to insert a second needle between his shoulder and neck.


May 2, 2006. Ohio. Joseph L. Clark.
It took 22 minutes for the execution technicians to find a vein suitable for insertion of the catheter. But three or four minutes thereafter, as the vein collapsed and Clark's arm began to swell, he raised his head off the gurney and said five times, "It don’t work. It don’t work." The curtains surrounding the gurney were then closed while the technicians worked for 30 minutes to find another vein. Media witnesses later reported that they heard "moaning, crying out and guttural noises."56 Finally, death was pronounced almost 90 minutes after the execution began. A spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Corrections told reporters that the execution team included paramedics, but not a physician or a nurse.


December 13, 2006. Florida. Angel Diaz.
After the first injection was administered, Mr. Diaz continued to move, and was squinting and grimacing as he tried to mouth words. A second dose was then administered, and 34 minutes passed before Mr. Diaz was declared dead. At first a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Corrections claimed that this was because Mr. Diaz had some sort of liver disease. After performing an autopsy, the Medical Examiner, Dr. William Hamilton, stated that Mr. Diaz’s liver was undamaged, but that the needle had gone through Mr. Diaz’s vein and out the other side, so the deadly chemicals were injected into soft tissue, rather than the vein. Two days after the execution, Governor Jeb Bush suspended all executions in the state and appointed a commission “to consider the humanity and constitutionality of lethal injections.”

May 24, 2007. Ohio. Christopher Newton.
According to the Associated Press, “prison medical staff” at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility struggled to find veins on each of Newton’s arms during the execution. Newton, who weighted 265 pounds, was declared dead almost two hours after the execution process began. The execution “team” stuck Newton at least ten times with needles before getting the shunts in place were the needles are injected.

Death Penalty (Temporarily) Reinstated for Cal Brown

A deeply split Supreme Court in Uttecht v. Brown reversed the Ninth Circuit on the issue of juror death qualification. The ruling grows out of the murder trial of Cal Coburn Brown, who was convicted and sentenced to death for first degree murder. Brown was prosecuted for raping and torturing a woman for two days before killing her and dumping her body in a parking lot. During jury selection, one potential member of the panel — his name was Richard Deal, although the Supreme Court refers to him throughout only as “Juror Z” — repeatedly said that he could impose the death penalty in circumstances that he thought appropriate. But some of his answers (recounted in an appendix to the majority opinion) show some misunderstanding of Washington state law on punishment for murder, and some ambiguity about just when Mr. Deal would be willing to vote for a death sentence.

The Supreme Court granted cert this Term in nine capital cases. One of the nine remains to be decided (Medellin). The Court ruled in favor of death four times (Ayers, Schriro, Lawrence, Uttecht) and in favor of the defendant four times (Abdul-Kabir, Brewer, Smith, Weaver). Only one case was not decided by how Justice Kennedy aligned himself (Weaver). Justice Kennedy’s vote, to repeat the obvious, governs the Court’s capital jurisprudence. He doesn’t seem to be in favor of dismantling it, but rather slowly modifying it.

We say move faster--we're waiting for you.