Death penalty: Soon to be a relic

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihgXfUKHkvxWVxqVvd4sx5Jtyl5R13XcCiu697fSOWTzPAXobPBZNiSDykpyOUCBChh-MYKAEZElNsWJxOGDlrXMHPcV9mq8-Q9t3-c3rDW-gTCWS2FH9ZRB7KsE6UwQNdOYqplyHjC4U/s1600/Texas+Prison+Museum.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihgXfUKHkvxWVxqVvd4sx5Jtyl5R13XcCiu697fSOWTzPAXobPBZNiSDykpyOUCBChh-MYKAEZElNsWJxOGDlrXMHPcV9mq8-Q9t3-c3rDW-gTCWS2FH9ZRB7KsE6UwQNdOYqplyHjC4U/s400/Texas+Prison+Museum.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Ol' Sparky, the Lone Star State's official instrument of death for 40 years,<br />resides these days in the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville."</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;"><b>Capital punishment is a morally and fiscally unsupportable program.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ol' Sparky, the Lone Star State's official instrument of death for 40 years, resides these days in the Texas Prison Museum in Huntsville. It's the museum's most popular exhibit, although the time is coming, we predict, when it will have competition. In the not-too-distant future, the needles, the drugs and the officious execution protocol that comprise the capital-punishment regimen in Texas also will be quaint relics on display. Museum visitors will marvel that a civilized society sustained such barbarism long after most Western democracies abjured the practice. The killing tools already are relics in most states, even where capital punishment remains on the books.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What's surprising is that the death penalty's demise is coming sooner than most Americans expected, even in Texas, the nation's most enthusiastic practitioner of state-sponsored killing. The U.S. Supreme Court may never get around to ruling that capital punishment is "cruel and unusual," but the practice will wither away, nevertheless. In fact, the process already has begun, even in the county that leads the nation in executions, Harris County. The recent election of Kim Ogg as Harris County district attorney means that voters have chosen a prosecutor more open to reform and reductions in capital prosecutions than her predecessor.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to a year-end report from the Death Penalty Information Center, death sentences, executions and public support for the death penalty continued their precipitous decline nationwide. Juries around the country imposed 30 death sentences this year, compared to 315 in 1996. This year's number represents the fewest in the modern era of capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Twenty people were executed in 2016, the lowest number since 1991, and those executions were geographically isolated. Two states, Georgia and Texas, accounted for 80 percent of all executions. Thirty-two states still allow capital punishment for the most heinous crimes, but most rarely, if ever, use it. Since the start of 2014, five states - Texas, Georgia, Missouri, Florida and Oklahoma - have carried out all but two of the nation's executions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Public support for the death penalty also continues to decline. According to a Pew Research Survey, support fell below 50 percent for the first time in more than four decades. Support falls even further when respondents are given alternatives, including life without parole.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Capital punishment is unlikely to be abolished permanently anytime soon. For now, only one member of the Supreme Court, Justice Stephen Breyer, questions whether it violates the Eighth Amendment. That number is unlikely to change when President-elect Donald Trump, a death-penalty supporter, gets to make his appointments to the court. His attorney-general nominee, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, also is an ardent death-penalty supporter.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What will happen, though, is that practicality will trump principle. Racism, randomness, decades-long delays and sheer expense will end capital punishment in this country - without officially ending capital punishment. Pragmatism prevails even in Texas. Time magazine a couple of years ago quoted Liberty County prosecutor Stephen Taylor, who acknowledged that cost is a factor in deciding on death. "You have to be very responsible in selecting where you want to spend your money," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Time also quoted Atlanta attorney David J. Burge, a leader of the Georgia Republican Party. "Capital punishment runs counter to core conservative principles of life, fiscal responsibility and limited government," he said. "The reality is that capital punishment is nothing more than an expensive, wasteful and risky government program."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">We agree. Whether it's principle or pragmatism that kills capital punishment, the end can't come too soon.</div><br />Source: <a href="http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Death-penalty-Soon-to-be-a-relic-10827636.php?t=d015728e5b438d9cbb&cmpid=email-premium" target="_blank">Houston Chronicle</a>, December 30, 2016<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? 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Death penalty: Soon to be a relic

"Ol' Sparky, the Lone Star State's official instrument of death for 40 years, resides these days in the Texas Prison Museum in ...

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Florida's death penalty system will face renewed stress in 2017

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfa-zDWS01p-6_-EybgwT-GrmbtB6wUP4WFrHxNZ5fEOW8GqQXFmcj2YEWRwrNBxONmBko_Xr5xdqE0F72ZtR5pjUDfPRRUp0_qNw2rJo6jo3K6ucnDepGtsHd8bFTioV1ntXtJiTKzQM/s1600/Florida+death+chamber.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Florida's death chamber" border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfa-zDWS01p-6_-EybgwT-GrmbtB6wUP4WFrHxNZ5fEOW8GqQXFmcj2YEWRwrNBxONmBko_Xr5xdqE0F72ZtR5pjUDfPRRUp0_qNw2rJo6jo3K6ucnDepGtsHd8bFTioV1ntXtJiTKzQM/s400/Florida+death+chamber.jpg" title="Florida's death chamber" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Florida's death chamber</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">TALLAHASSEE — Florida's death penalty system, under sustained legal assault for the past year, faces renewed pressure in 2017 that will strain courts, victims and taxpayers in ways sure to rekindle a debate over capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A series of federal and state court rulings will bring upheaval to a system long criticized for racial disparities and for seemingly endless and unjust delays. Now the state must confront the enormous impact of a case known as Hurst vs. Florida, in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that constitutional rights of defendants were violated because their juries had too little say in recommending sentences of death.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Applying the Hurst case to Florida — the state with the second most death row inmates at 384 — the state Supreme Court decided that about half of those inmates should still face execution.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Those inmates were sentenced before 2002, when another case, Ring vs. Arizona, found that it was unconstitutional for a judge instead of a jury to find the facts necessary to impose the death penalty. At the time, the Florida Supreme Court decided the Ring decision did not apply because Florida had a different sentencing scheme and that in another case, the nation's highest court upheld the constitutionality of Florida's system.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But the other half of the death row population — most inmates sentenced after Ring in 2002 — could be resentenced to life without parole, depending on the facts in each case, because they were condemned to die under a law ruled unconstitutional by the Hurst case.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Attorney General Pam Bondi will continue to seek to carry out as many death sentences as possible, arguing that any previous sentencing errors were legally harmless. But as a flurry of post-Hurst appeals clogs the courts, legal experts foresee an expensive and, for the families of victims, agonizingly painful review of as many as 200 cases in which defendants seek sentences of life without parole.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Two hundred do-overs," said Robert Dunham of the Death Penalty Information Center, a national group critical of how states, especially Florida, carry out the death penalty. "There are not enough judges, court personnel, prosecutors or defense lawyers to timely move these cases forward."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That's not all. A pro-death penalty Legislature must fix the law a second time after the Florida Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional a provision that does not require all 12 jurors to agree on a death sentence when they recommend punishment to a judge who issues the final life-or-death verdict.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Because jury recommendations of death in Florida are usually not unanimous, the practical effect will be more do-overs, with new sentencing hearings in dozens of cases.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Prosecutors will have to track down old trial transcripts and witnesses, and families of victims will have to endure a public spectacle of some of the state's most horrific crimes a second time.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It's an absolute nightmare for these families," said Bruce Bartlett, the chief assistant state attorney in Pinellas County. "And it's a logistical nightmare for us as you've got to reconstruct all these cases."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Bartlett identified nine cases in his Pinellas-Pasco circuit alone in which death row inmates could be resentenced to life because of split decisions by juries that recommended death.</div><b><a href="http://web.tampabay.com/news/politics/legislature/floridas-death-penalty-system-will-face-renewed-stress-in-2017/2307829" target="_blank"><br /></a></b><b><a href="http://web.tampabay.com/news/politics/legislature/floridas-death-penalty-system-will-face-renewed-stress-in-2017/2307829" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article</a></b><br /><br />Source: Tampa Bay Times, Steve Bousquet, December 30, 2016<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? 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Florida's death penalty system will face renewed stress in 2017

Florida's death chamber TALLAHASSEE — Florida's death penalty system, under sustained legal assault for the past year, faces renewed...

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The Stolen Supreme Court Seat

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoM_w-5SulQFmfKpQkOFtwTQ3s1C6xwNtdhtnywBdeJBR8u3ZAvdU8adYjrYgZQFkSH_3Utu_p-zYNKH1ET6p6sb3xXn6XlWGtNFGwU62zJng8Hma6XvFHEKXh98usba6YuHAOkae5EOQ/s1600/US+Supreme+Court.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="US Supreme Court" border="0" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoM_w-5SulQFmfKpQkOFtwTQ3s1C6xwNtdhtnywBdeJBR8u3ZAvdU8adYjrYgZQFkSH_3Utu_p-zYNKH1ET6p6sb3xXn6XlWGtNFGwU62zJng8Hma6XvFHEKXh98usba6YuHAOkae5EOQ/s400/US+Supreme+Court.jpg" title="US Supreme Court" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Soon after his inauguration next month, President-elect Donald Trump will nominate someone to the Supreme Court, which has been hamstrung by a vacancy since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February. There will be public debates about the nominee’s credentials, past record, judicial philosophy and temperament. There will be Senate hearings and a vote.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">No matter how it plays out, Americans must remember one thing above all: The person who gets confirmed will sit in a stolen seat.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was stolen from Barack Obama, a twice-elected president who fulfilled his constitutional duty more than nine months ago by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/opinion/merrick-garland-for-the-supreme-court.html" target="_blank">nominating Merrick Garland</a>, a highly qualified and widely respected federal appellate judge.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was stolen by top Senate Republicans, who broke with longstanding tradition and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/us/politics/supreme-court-nomination-obama.html" target="_blank">refused to consider</a> any nominee Mr. Obama might send them, because they wanted to preserve the court’s conservative majority. The main perpetrators of the theft were Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, and Charles Grassley, chairman of the Judiciary Committee. But virtually all Republican senators were accomplices; <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/03/21/us/politics/where-republican-senators-stand-on-the-supreme-court-nomination.html" target="_blank">only two</a> supported holding hearings.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Republican party line — that it was an election year, so the American people should have a “voice” in the selection of the next justice — was a patent lie. The people spoke when they re-elected Mr. Obama in 2012, entrusting him to choose new members for the court. And the Senate <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/16/opinion/in-election-years-a-history-of-confirming-court-nominees.html" target="_blank">has had no problem</a> considering, and usually confirming, election-year nominees in the past.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of course, Supreme Court appointments have always been political, and the court’s ideological center has shifted back and forth over time. But the Senate has given nominees full consideration and a vote even when the party in power has opposed a president’s choice. That is, until this year, when Republicans claimed that though the Constitution<a href="http://www.annenbergclassroom.org/page/article-ii-section-2" target="_blank"> calls for the Senate’s </a><a href="http://www.annenbergclassroom.org/page/article-ii-section-2">“advice and consent,”</a> senators aren’t obligated to do anything. This is a bad-faith reading of that clause, even if there is no clear way to force a vote. It certainly obliterates a well-established political norm that makes a functioning judicial branch possible. As Paul Krugman <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how-republics-end.html" target="_blank">wrote </a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/19/opinion/how-republics-end.html">in his column</a> on Monday, institutions are not magically self-sustaining, and they “don’t protect against tyranny when powerful people start defying political norms.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This particular norm is of paramount importance because the court’s institutional legitimacy depends on its perceived separation from the elected branches — <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/us/politics/john-roberts-criticized-supreme-court-confirmation-process-before-there-was-a-vacancy.html?_r=0" target="_blank">a fragile concept</a> in the best of times. By tying the latest appointment directly to the outcome of the election, Mr. McConnell and his allies took a torch to that idea — an outrageous gambit that, to nearly everyone’s shock, has paid off. But while Republicans may be celebrating now, the damage they have inflicted on the confirmation process, and on the court as an institution, may be irreversible.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHIpsBYs9L2DTMlBp5Ls6uKMHG6PP5nRzPH47iLYv9tlLwbydOo6PHINg-FgcUqDQ5r4_yr3Nj69XtcxA5-xhYA_h3oJHSD65p9m8j_JJGrfLiH57-Cl0B7JD22tLlfxaXyk3Mk-Sto7E/s1600/Antonin+Scalia+Death_PH09.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHIpsBYs9L2DTMlBp5Ls6uKMHG6PP5nRzPH47iLYv9tlLwbydOo6PHINg-FgcUqDQ5r4_yr3Nj69XtcxA5-xhYA_h3oJHSD65p9m8j_JJGrfLiH57-Cl0B7JD22tLlfxaXyk3Mk-Sto7E/s400/Antonin+Scalia+Death_PH09.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The slope is both slippery and steep. If Republicans could justify an election-year blockade, what’s to stop Democrats in the future from doing the same? For that matter, why should the party controlling the Senate <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-20/supreme-court-nominations-will-never-be-the-same" target="_blank">ever allow</a> a president of the opposing party to choose a justice<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-12-20/supreme-court-nominations-will-never-be-the-same">?</a> Indeed, in the weeks before the election, Senate Republicans were threatening, with the encouragement of leading conservative thinkers, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/opinion/a-coup-against-the-supreme-court.html" target="_blank">never to confirm anyone</a> to fill the vacancy if Hillary Clinton won.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Can anything be done to repair the harm? One step — as obvious as it is unlikely — would be for Mr. Trump to renominate Mr. Garland. Conservatives will scoff, but they know he is as qualified for the job as anyone in the country. When Mr. Garland was floated as a possible choice for the Supreme Court in 2010, Orrin Hatch, the senior Republican senator from Utah, called him a “consensus nominee” and said there was <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-hatch-idUSTRE6456QY20100506" target="_blank">“no question”</a> that he would be confirmed with bipartisan support. That’s partly why Mr. Obama nominated him this time, and also why Mr. McConnell denied him a hearing — he knew he couldn’t prevent a Senate vote once Americans saw an eminently qualified and reasonable jurist testify on live TV.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">At the very least, Mr. Trump could follow President Obama’s example and pick a centrist — someone who commands wide respect and operates within the bounds of mainstream legal thought. That would be an appropriate gesture from a man who lost the popular vote by more than 2.8 million votes and will enter office with the <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/199352/trump-transition-approval-lower-predecessors.aspx" target="_blank">lowest approval</a><a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/199352/trump-transition-approval-lower-predecessors.aspx"> ratings</a> in recent history.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The shameful, infuriating actions of the Senate Republicans won’t be ignored in the history books. In a desperate effort to keep a conservative majority on the court, they rejected their own professed values of preserving American institutions. There’s little hope that they will come to their senses now, but they and Mr. Trump have the power, and the obligation, to fix the mess they created.</div><br />Source: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/24/opinion/sunday/the-stolen-supreme-court-seat.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>, The Editorial Borad, December 24, 2016<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? 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The Stolen Supreme Court Seat

Soon after his inauguration next month, President-elect Donald Trump will nominate someone to the Supreme Court, which has been hamstrung by...

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U.S.: The Continuing Collapse of the Death Penalty

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXw7H4WU4CaLY3ClKnIGDkZPeAejcd3woNC1kiZBwV8I9xau5i5dC_8VvHiaRXF9nlNOhSgxRd-Dfzn-fB8jcpGBubLKbq3brF_hDD18XJ6wK95vkoI8ZoDxHYzp4lbJchlMWDPiFPE94/s1600/Oklahoma+death+chamber.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Oklahoma's death chamber" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXw7H4WU4CaLY3ClKnIGDkZPeAejcd3woNC1kiZBwV8I9xau5i5dC_8VvHiaRXF9nlNOhSgxRd-Dfzn-fB8jcpGBubLKbq3brF_hDD18XJ6wK95vkoI8ZoDxHYzp4lbJchlMWDPiFPE94/s400/Oklahoma+death+chamber.jpg" title="Oklahoma's death chamber" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Piece by piece, the death penalty continues to fall apart. Last week, the Florida Supreme Court <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-florida-death-penalty-asay-20161222-story.html" target="_blank">invalidated</a> between 150 and 200 death sentences — nearly half of all those in the state — because they were imposed under a law the United States Supreme Court <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/opinion/floridas-death-machine-loses-again.html" target="_blank">struck down as unconstitutional</a> in January. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The law, which required judges and not juries to make the factual findings necessary to sentence someone to die, violated the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a jury trial. “A jury’s mere recommendation is not enough,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for an 8-to-1 majority.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Florida <a href="http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/decisions/2016/sc14-436.pdf" target="_blank">decision</a> is the most recent sign, in a year full of them, that the morally abhorrent practice of capital punishment is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/us/death-penalty-capital-punishment.html?_r=0" target="_blank">sliding into the dustbin</a> of American history — where it should have been long ago.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Juries around the country imposed 30 death sentences in 2016, a 40 percent drop from last year and fewer than at any time since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, according to a <a href="http://deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/2016YrEnd.pdf" target="_blank">report</a> by the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group that opposes capital punishment. Twenty people were executed this year, the lowest number in a quarter-century.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The practice is not only increasingly rare, it is concentrated in an extremely narrow slice of the country. Only five states carried out executions in 2016, the report found, and only five imposed more than one death sentence. California sentenced nine people to die, the most of any state, but no one has been put to death there since 2006.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Public support for the death penalty keeps dropping, too — <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/29/support-for-death-penalty-lowest-in-more-than-four-decades/" target="_blank">falling below 50 percent</a> for the first time in more than four decades, according to a Pew Research survey. Support falls even further when respondents are given the alternative of a long prison term like life without parole. Though voters in California, Nebraska and Oklahoma last month <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/11/09/the-death-penalty-is-alive-and-well?ref=hp-4-121#.GEv5BuAM2" target="_blank">preserved</a> the death penalty, the overall trend is toward growing discomfort with state-sanctioned killing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The total abolition of capital punishment, however, will depend on the Supreme Court’s reading of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-viii" target="_blank">cruel and unusual punishments</a>. So far, only one current member of the court, Justice Stephen Breyer, a <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/supreme-court-justice-stephen-breyer-death-penalty-may-be-unconstitutional-119547" target="_blank">regular critic</a> of the death penalty, has expressed openness to examining this question. This month Justice Breyer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/us/politics/justice-stephen-breyer-death-penalty-supreme-court.html" target="_blank">took aim</a> at the practice again, in a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/16-5247_q713.pdf" target="_blank">dissent</a> from the court’s decision not to hear an appeal from a death-row inmate in Florida.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Pointing to the facts of several recent cases that had come before the court, Justice Breyer asked whether the death penalty itself — plagued by arbitrariness, racism, decades-long delays and faulty execution-drug protocols — violates the Eighth Amendment. The people who end up being executed, he wrote, “are not the ‘worst of the worst,’ but, rather, are individuals chosen at random, on the basis, perhaps of geography, perhaps of the views of individual prosecutors, or still worse on the basis of race.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Meanwhile the court is making matters worse with its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/us/politics/the-lethal-gaps-in-how-the-supreme-court-handles-the-death-penalty.html">erratic </a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/us/politics/the-lethal-gaps-in-how-the-supreme-court-handles-the-death-penalty.html" target="_blank">decisions</a> in recent last-minute death-penalty appeals. Who lives and who dies is arbitrary.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Justice Breyer is asking the right questions. It is up to a majority of his colleagues to listen closely and bring the only just result: the permanent abolition of capital punishment in America.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/26/opinion/the-continuing-collapse-of-the-death-penalty.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>, The Editorial Board, December 26, 2016</div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? 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U.S.: The Continuing Collapse of the Death Penalty

Piece by piece, the death penalty continues to fall apart. Last week, the Florida Supreme Court invalidated between 150 and 200 death sente...

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Trump to inherit more than 100 court vacancies, plans to reshape judiciary

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc43GKgsYq-I6vGT5-te_WaIR-sKbg9J0xslQmc9EyChWUPsJVSCfkaEFypntmQkmNNmLIyuU-OQ_S2ea-LXn8bNKoqc_MWMyi2jxHp9AWoDXTQ5a3vZEuQROAxsb9dB9IlDECEzwzDEI/s1600/SOL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc43GKgsYq-I6vGT5-te_WaIR-sKbg9J0xslQmc9EyChWUPsJVSCfkaEFypntmQkmNNmLIyuU-OQ_S2ea-LXn8bNKoqc_MWMyi2jxHp9AWoDXTQ5a3vZEuQROAxsb9dB9IlDECEzwzDEI/s400/SOL.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Donald Trump is set to inherit an uncommon number of vacancies in the federal courts in addition to the open Supreme Court seat, giving the president-elect a monumental opportunity to reshape the judiciary after taking office.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The estimated 103 judicial vacancies that President Obama is expected to hand over to Trump in the Jan. 20 transition of power is nearly double the 54 openings Obama found eight years ago following George W. Bush’s presidency.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Confirmation of Obama’s judicial nominees slowed to a crawl after Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015. Obama White House officials blame Senate Republicans for what they characterize as an unprecedented level of obstruction in blocking the Democratic president’s court picks.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The result is a multitude of openings throughout the federal circuit and district courts that will allow the new Republican president to quickly make a wide array of lifetime appointments.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">State gun control laws, abortion restrictions, voter laws, anti-discrimination measures and immigrant issues are all matters that are increasingly heard by federal judges and will be influenced by the new composition of the courts. Trump has vowed to choose ideologues in the mold of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon — a prospect that has activists on the right giddy.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I’m optimistic he’ll come at this right out of the gate,” said Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative group that has opposed many of Obama’s court choices.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“Every president can expect to make a huge impact,” Severino added. “[Trump] is unique in having campaigned really hard on this issue — the significance of the courts, and of the Supreme Court in particular.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Supreme Court vacancy created by Scalia’s death in February was a motivating issue for many conservative voters, especially evangelical Christians, to turn out for Trump. Senate Republicans refused to hold even a hearing on Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, for the Scalia seat.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Democrats accuse Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, of intentionally denying Obama’s nominees a fair hearing and running out the clock in hopes that a Republican would succeed him, as Trump has.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Twenty-five of Obama’s court nominees were pending on the Senate floor, after having been approved out of the committee with bipartisan support, but did not get a vote before the Senate ended its two-year term before the holidays, according to White House spokesman Eric Schultz.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“Republican tactics have been shameful and will forever leave a stain on the United States Senate,” Schultz said. “Republican congressional dysfunction has now metastasized to the third branch of government, and that is not a legacy to be proud of.”</div><br /><b><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-to-inherit-more-than-100-court-vacancies-plans-to-reshape-judiciary/2016/12/25/d190dd18-c928-11e6-85b5-76616a33048d_story.html" target="_blank">Click here to read the full article</a></b><br /><br />Source: The Washington Post, Philip Rucker and Robert Barnes, December 25, 2016<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? 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Trump to inherit more than 100 court vacancies, plans to reshape judiciary

Donald Trump is set to inherit an uncommon number of vacancies in the federal courts in addition to the open Supreme Court seat, giving the ...

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Off limits: Of Mice and Men and the death penalty

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYqOZ0L-CGG16v3j0-CwiB_spUQeJKoBfbq1-Ca001YdJh7jwkQusFRqTw36Swjqk1Uf63UNcQgykEn9JfdPOd3RsLhJFs67tC18KAs00tvStMiJTP20ppVKS1iXGcY03SngQvwWjFCJI/s1600/of-Mice-and-Men+John+Steinbeck.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Of Mice and Men by John Steincbeck" border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYqOZ0L-CGG16v3j0-CwiB_spUQeJKoBfbq1-Ca001YdJh7jwkQusFRqTw36Swjqk1Uf63UNcQgykEn9JfdPOd3RsLhJFs67tC18KAs00tvStMiJTP20ppVKS1iXGcY03SngQvwWjFCJI/s400/of-Mice-and-Men+John+Steinbeck.jpg" title="Of Mice and Men by John Steincbeck" width="266" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Seventy years after its publication, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men* continues to stimulate debate, pro and con, about the death penalty. But justifying capital punishment was the last thing on the mind of the author, a liberal thinker who created the character of Lennie to increase our understanding of the mentally challenged and the American underclass.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As a defense attorney who admires Of Mice and Men for this very reason, I’m angry that Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Judge Cathy Cochran used Lennie in a 2004 legal opinion about imposing the death penalty when mental capacity is at issue. The “Lennie standard” she proposed continues to have consequences in the courts, and in the lives of the condemned.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">John Steinbeck’s late son Thom, an accomplished writer, was furious about Judge Cochran’s opinion after it was rendered. In a 2012 interview with the Beaumont (Texas) Enterprise, Thom’s wife Gail Steinbeck, an attorney, said that “his ears turned red” when her husband first learned of Ex Parte Briseno. In his view, the decision was a gross distortion of his father’s meaning. In a statement published by The New York Times on August 8, 2012, Thom complained bitterly about the misconstruction of his father’s intentions in writing Of Mice and Men:</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I had no idea that the great state of Texas would use a fictional character that my father created . . . as a benchmark to identify whether defendants with intellectual disability should live or die,” Thom Steinbeck said. “My father was a highly gifted writer who won the Nobel Prize for his ability to create art about the depth of the human experience and condition. His work certainly wasn’t meant to be scientific, and the character of Lennie was never intended to be used to diagnose a medical condition like intellectual disability.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I find the whole premise to be insulting, outrageous, ridiculous and profoundly tragic. I am certain that if my father, John Steinbeck were here, he would be deeply angry and ashamed to see his work used in this way.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: justify;">The Supreme Court considers the case of John Steinbeck</h3><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 2002, the Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty for the intellectually disabled, but left it to the states to define what constitutes intellectual disability. Since 2004, courts in Texas have used Judge Cochran’s ill-considered Lennie standard to determine intellectual disability in capital punishment cases. Arguing before the Supreme Court last month in Moore v. Texas, the solicitor general of Texas, Scott Keller, bristled when Justice Sonya Sotomayor asked him about the state’s use of the Lennie standard, an illogical jumble concocted from a sentimental—and incorrect—interpretation of John Steinbeck’s character.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“The character from Of Mice and Men was never part of the test,” asserted Keller in the state’s defense.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“It was an aside [in Judge Cochran’s] opinion,” Justice Sotomayor replied. “But it informed its view of how to judge [intellectual disability], insisting that Texas clearly used the Lennie standard.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Questions about Judge Cochran’s odd Of Mice and Men citation—and the quirkiness of a judge relying on a work of literary fiction to support a legal opinion—had been predicted long before oral argument before the Supreme Court began. M. Todd Henderson, a University of Chicago law professor, pointed out the nature of the incongruity in 2008.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“Citations to literature are extraordinarily rare in federal appellate court opinions, appearing in only 1 out of every 10,000 federal appellate cases,” Henderson wrote. “When judges do cite fictional works in judicial opinions, they are most likely to cite to novels for propositions that are closely related to their own work and job.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That’s why it’s baffling that Judge Cochran was reportedly “unfazed” when she learned of Thom Steinbeck’s outrage over her violation of his father’s purpose in writing Of Mice and Men.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">John Steinbeck wrote most Of Mice and Men at the Steinbeck family cottage in Pacific Grove, Calif. Ironically, Judge Cochran is said to have reread “all of Steinbeck” while living in nearby Monterey, three decades later, in the 1960s.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Recently, my wife and I traveled to the National Steinbeck Center in neighboring Salinas to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary. Driving through John Steinbeck’s beloved Salinas Valley, we saw the still poor, still struggling migrant workers toiling under the California sun, like Lennie and George, for subsistence pay. That evening, we left our comfortable bed and breakfast to stroll hand-in-hand along the shore celebrated by Steinbeck in Sea of Cortez and Cannery Row. Nowhere, not even in the turbulent tide pools that Steinbeck explored with his wife Carol, did we perceive the death penalty.<br /><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;">* <i>Of Mice and Men</i> is a novella written by author John Steinbeck. Published in 1937, it tells the story of George Milton and Lennie Small, two displaced migrant ranch workers, who move from place to place in California in search of new job opportunities during the Great Depression in the United States. George Milton, an intelligent but uneducated man, and Lennie Small, a bulky, strong man but mentally disabled—are in Soledad on their way to another part of California. They hope to one day attain the dream of settling down on their own piece of land. Lennie's part of the dream is merely to tend and pet rabbits on the farm, as he loves touching soft animals, although he always kills them. This dream is one of Lennie's favorite stories, which George constantly retells. They had fled from Weed, after Lennie touched a young woman's dress and wouldn't let go, leading to an accusation of rape. It soon becomes clear that the two are close and George is Lennie's protector, despite his antics. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Mice_and_Men" target="_blank">Read more (Wikipedia)...</a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: <a href="https://calcoastnews.com/2016/12/off-limits-mice-men-death-penalty/" target="_blank">calcoastnews.com</a>, Opinion, Stephen Cooper, December 24, 2016. Stephen Cooper is a former D.C. public defender who worked as an assistant federal public defender in Alabama between 2012 and 2015. He has contributed to numerous magazines and newspapers in the United States and overseas. Follow him on Twitter @SteveCooperEsq.</div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? 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Off limits: Of Mice and Men and the death penalty

Seventy years after its publication, John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men* continues to stimulate debate, pro and con, about the death penalty. ...

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Justice Breyer and the Death Penalty

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmfqYSY5MhRsczFJwN-dokZyIn9yWhwWXFLt-yG0MtALGSq_NCpSZZ2WX0o2bjto2qXrVlYXLBoVkbAP23URVoXzSiuVUdf9wMvj5Al4XRy7y26RLjupx9VHEVHOlikwBX4eZUtwiwxYg/s1600/justice-stephen-breyer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Justice Stephen G. Breyer" border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmfqYSY5MhRsczFJwN-dokZyIn9yWhwWXFLt-yG0MtALGSq_NCpSZZ2WX0o2bjto2qXrVlYXLBoVkbAP23URVoXzSiuVUdf9wMvj5Al4XRy7y26RLjupx9VHEVHOlikwBX4eZUtwiwxYg/s400/justice-stephen-breyer.jpg" title="Justice Stephen G. Breyer" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Justice Stephen G. Breyer</td></tr></tbody></table>To the Editor:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">“<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/us/politics/justice-stephen-breyer-death-penalty-supreme-court.html" target="_blank">Breyer Continues His Push Against the Death Penalty</a>” (news article, Dec. 13), about Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s dissenting opinion in the case of Ronald B. Smith, who was recently executed in Alabama, is far too generous.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Twenty inmates have been executed in the United States in 2016. More than half (including a client of mine) have sought last-minute stays of execution from the Supreme Court (as Mr. Smith did). Justice Breyer recorded opposition in only three of these executions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">If Justice Breyer sincerely has constitutional reservations about the carrying out of the death penalty, he should do what other justices have done upon reaching a similar conclusion, by voting to prevent the execution from going forward.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Until his actual voting pattern demonstrates principled consistency, his on-again, off-again critique of the death penalty not only helps sustain an arbitrary system, but it also exemplifies it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/22/opinion/justice-breyer-and-the-death-penalty.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>, The Opinion Pages, Letter, David R. Dow, December 22, 2016. The writer is a professor at the University of Houston Law Center.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! <a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JBVXEBZLP3WKW" target="_blank">DONATE!</a></b></div><form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_blank"><div style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/fr_FR/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" /></div></form><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div>

Justice Breyer and the Death Penalty

Justice Stephen G. Breyer To the Editor: “ Breyer Continues His Push Against the Death Penalty ” (news article, Dec. 13), about Justice Step...

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Florida Supreme Court: More than 200 death row inmates were given unconstitutional death sentences

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbXHx0jB50_JysJNyjnEtEWG5ewkqOUUj-mn43ylF-sYZLM3f-Rf_ltoLJNCODzeR51VPcgiTy8ovD9ETka0jeJ2NSuw7o2criI-p7nrByVuJBdu1-gg8F4Vpy_4NEwgpkQtFUjq4SiE0/s1600/Florida+death+chamber.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Florida's death chamber" border="0" height="265" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbXHx0jB50_JysJNyjnEtEWG5ewkqOUUj-mn43ylF-sYZLM3f-Rf_ltoLJNCODzeR51VPcgiTy8ovD9ETka0jeJ2NSuw7o2criI-p7nrByVuJBdu1-gg8F4Vpy_4NEwgpkQtFUjq4SiE0/s400/Florida+death+chamber.jpg" title="Florida's death chamber" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Florida's death chamber</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that more than half the people on Florida's death row are entitled to a new sentencing hearing because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling earlier this year that found the state's death penalty unconstitutional.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The decision covers more than 200 inmates — and includes all of those who were sentenced after 2002 or whose appeals were not final by that year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It is a legal decision that death row inmates, prosecutors, defense attorneys and the families of murder victims have awaited since January, when it became clear that Florida needed to rework its death penalty statute to bring it into line with the way other states handled those cases, specifically by requiring that juries — not judges —make the key findings required to impose a death sentence.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It also suggests that trial courts across Florida are about to be swamped by death row inmates, asking to be resentenced.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">All those resentencings would be a Herculean task for trial judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys across the state, said Orange-Osceola Public Defender Robert Wesley who predicted that they could create a backlog that might take ten years to unjam.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The ruling applies to more than 40 Central Florida convicted murderers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">They include Bessman Okafor, who in 2012 murdered an Orange County man who was about to testify against him at a home invasion trial; ax murderer John Buzia, a handyman convicted of killing an elderly Seminole County man in 2004; and Michael Gordon Reynolds, who beat and stabbed to death a Seminole County father, mother and 11-year-old daughter in the community of Geneva in 1998.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><h3 style="text-align: justify;">A moratorium since January</h3><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thursday's decision is the result of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in January.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">By a vote of 8-1, that court ruled that jurors – not a judge – must specifically identify why someone convicted of a capital crime should be put to death.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That case involved Timothy Lee Hurst, a Pensacola man convicted of murdering his boss at a Popeyes Fried Chicken restaurant in 1998 with a box cutter then putting her body in a freezer.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The high court found that Florida's death penalty statute was unconstitutional but left it to the Florida Supreme Court to decide whether the ruling should apply retroactively.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The state has not executed an inmate since then.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The state supreme court has issued several death penalty rulings in the interim. Some hinted that it would interpret the Hurst decision broadly but each stopped short of spelling it out.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On Thursday, that changed. The court laid it out: Every death penalty handed down in Florida since 2002 is unconstitutional. That's 55 percent of the state's death row population.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That's because in 2002 the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a ruling – Ring v. Arizona – that generally said the same thing to the state of Arizona that the high court said to Florida in the Hurst decision 14 years later: Juries – not judges – must decide whether the death penalty is appropriate.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">One of the factors the Florida Supreme Court had to take into consideration was how disruptive to the day-to-day workings of Florida's court system their decision would be.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Invalidating every death sentence as unconstitutional, the justices concluded, would be too burdensome. That's why they limited it to those inmates who were sentenced after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down the Ring decision in 2002.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Even so, Thursday's decision suggests that any Florida inmate who was given the death penalty after the 2002 is entitled to be resentenced.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That would require a mini-trial in each case at which a new jury would listen to evidence then rule whether the evidence justified the death penalty.</div><br />Source: <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-florida-death-penalty-asay-20161222-story.html" target="_blank">Orlando Sentinel</a>, Rene Stutzman and Gal Tziperman Lotan, December 22, 2016<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! <a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JBVXEBZLP3WKW" target="_blank">DONATE!</a></b></div><form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_blank"><div style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/fr_FR/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" /></div></form><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div>

Florida Supreme Court: More than 200 death row inmates were given unconstitutional death sentences

Florida's death chamber The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that more than half the people on Florida's death row are entitl...

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Alabama court rules death penalty law constitutional in 3 cases SCOTUS sent back for review

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfqMRqid7JyFlFbXKd6gRF5W4hjDtchqkIlqwt-TTrFoyVLAKMx-JeJ1cDvRfWw_WKyoI5kj40a80K76BbJovNpoJlLu64J1yyRmMaMCbnhUyYpymwhVgrmth0gF6ms3hdR93fnPKF-wk/s1600/Alabama.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Alabama" border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfqMRqid7JyFlFbXKd6gRF5W4hjDtchqkIlqwt-TTrFoyVLAKMx-JeJ1cDvRfWw_WKyoI5kj40a80K76BbJovNpoJlLu64J1yyRmMaMCbnhUyYpymwhVgrmth0gF6ms3hdR93fnPKF-wk/s400/Alabama.jpg" title="Alabama" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday ruled the death sentences of 3 state inmates are constitutional and don't conflict with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that struck down Florida's similar death penalty sentencing scheme.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The U.S. Supreme Court had vacated the sentences of Alabama death row inmates Ronnie Kirksey, Corey Wimbley, and Ryan Gerald Russell, this year and sent them back to the state appeals court to review in light of its Florida ruling.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Alabama's death sentencing law has been compared to Florida's because both allowed judges to override jury recommendations for life and instead impose death.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On Friday the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals said it wasn't the same and affirmed the convictions of Kirksey, Wimbley and Russell. The court said Alabama's law is constitutional and does not "run afoul" of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Hurst v. Florida in January.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Prosecutors and Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange have repeatedly argued that Alabama's law was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1995 and is not the same as the portion of the Florida law struck down in Hurst.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Florida's law had required the judge -- not the jury -- to find the existence of an aggravating circumstance in order for the defendant to be subject to the death penalty.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Alabama's law already requires the jury to find an aggravating factor, such as murder during the commission of a robbery, kidnapping or rape, prosecutors argue. Therefore, at the time of conviction, the jury has already agreed upon at least one aggravating factor before the sentencing phase began.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Alabama, after the jury unanimously convicts a defendant with at least one aggravating factor at the trial jurors in a separate hearing then weigh any other aggravating factors and mitigating circumstances and recommend life without parole or death. Jurors must vote 10-2, 11-1 or 12-0 to recommend death. The judge then imposes the final sentence and at that time can override the jury's life or death recommendation. Most of the overrides in Alabama have resulted in the death penalty.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In its order in Wimbley's case, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals found that the jury - not a judge - had determined Wimbley was eligible for the death penalty because it had unanimously convicted him of murder during the course of a robbery and arson. Robbery and arson are both aggravating factors.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Consequently, the jury's guilt-phase verdict satisfied Wimbley's Sixth Amendment right to a jury finding as to the existence of an aggravating circumstance," the appeals court stated. "That, as the Alabama Supreme Court explained, is all that "Ring (a previous SCOTUS ruling) and Hurst require ... nothing more and nothing less."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Florida's legislature enacted a new law that gives the jury, not the judge, the power to impose a death sentence. In Delaware, the only other state that allowed judicial overrides, that state's Supreme Court struck down its override law in August. That leaves Alabama as the only state that allows judicial override.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Alabama is now the only state to allow judges to override jury recommendations for life without parole and for those recommendations to be non-unanimous.</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Jefferson County Circuit Judge Tracie Todd in March ruled in four of her capital murder cases that Alabama's capital punishment sentencing scheme is unconstitutional based on the Hurst case.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In its order the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals told Jefferson County Circuit Court Judge Tracie Todd to vacate her March 3 order</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In June the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals ordered Todd to vacate her rulings and declared the state's law is constitutional.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Then on Sept. 30, the Alabama Supreme Court weighed in. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled in the case of death row inmate Jerry Bohannon that Alabama's death penalty law is constitutional in light of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Hurst v. Florida.</div><br />Source: al.com, December 17, 2016<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? 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Alabama court rules death penalty law constitutional in 3 cases SCOTUS sent back for review

The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday ruled the death sentences of 3 state inmates are constitutional and don't conflict with ...

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