Texas executes Christopher Wilkins

<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/AVvXsEhIdpZyb_m-U-ocEV16hLf1DcEPUgd0ZuRf9rZrk_XHRWP2jKklzlIE9uKhE-Sst4ztSAwKbm_K5JZ9EnkviDOofAh_DrnmhZJaRi3wyxA8ofUNeIFNAu2b4VJbGBXAa1fYN-pRLjtEWpA/s1600/Christopher+Wilkins+TX.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Christopher Wilkins" border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIdpZyb_m-U-ocEV16hLf1DcEPUgd0ZuRf9rZrk_XHRWP2jKklzlIE9uKhE-Sst4ztSAwKbm_K5JZ9EnkviDOofAh_DrnmhZJaRi3wyxA8ofUNeIFNAu2b4VJbGBXAa1fYN-pRLjtEWpA/s320/Christopher+Wilkins+TX.jpg" title="Christopher Wilkins" width="256" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Christopher Wilkins</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">A Fort Worth jury sent Christopher Wilkins to death row for killing 2 men he admitted shooting over a $20 phony drug deal after Wilkins said he didn't care whether he was sentenced to death.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Look, it is no big deal," Wilkins calmly said from the witness stand at his 2008 trial.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On Wednesday, more than 11 years after the killings, the 48-year-old Wilkins was put to death by lethal injection at The Walls Unit, in Huntsville, Texas.<br /><br />Christopher Wilkins was pronounced dead at 6:29 p.m.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The U.S. Supreme Court declined to block the execution. The court's ruling on appeals for Wilkins came about three hours before his scheduled lethal injection.<br /><br />Wilkins' attorneys had argued to the Supreme Court that he had poor legal help at his trial and during earlier appeals. State attorneys argued courts had rejected similar appeals and that defense lawyers were simply employing delaying tactics.<br /><br />Wilkins' execution is the nation's first this year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 2005, after serving time in prison for gun possession, Wilkins drove a stolen truck to Fort Worth, where police tied him to several aggravated assaults and burglaries. There he befriended 2 men, 40-year-old Willie Freeman and 33-year-old Mike Silva, who duped him into paying $20 for a piece of gravel he thought was a rock of crack cocaine.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to court records, Wilkins said he shot Freeman on Oct. 28, 2005, for laughing about the scam, then he shot Silva because he was there.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Their bodies were found in a ditch. Wilkins' fingerprints were found in Silva's wrecked SUV, and a pentagram matching one of Wilkins' numerous tattoos had been carved into the hood.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"When I get wound up, I have a fuse that is short," Wilkins testified. "I don't think about what I am doing."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He also admitted that a day earlier he had shot and killed another man, Gilbert Vallejo, 47, outside a Fort Worth bar in a dispute over a pay phone, and about a week later he used a stolen car to try to run down 2 people because he believed 1 of them had taken his sunglasses.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"I know they are bad decisions," Wilkins said of his actions. "I make them anyway."<br /><br />"I think subconsciously, I've been trying to kill myself or get myself killed since I was probably 12 or 13 years old," he added. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Kevin Rousseau, a Tarrant County assistant district attorney, described Wilkins as "a professional criminal. Very violent. He used violence as a means of achieve his means on a routine basis."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Wilkins' attorneys had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the execution, saying he had poor legal help at trial and during other appeals, and that the courts should have authorized money to his current lawyer to support other appeals and a clemency petition.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"He has never had a meaningful opportunity at any stage to develop that claim, to have any court address it on the merits, or even to have it considered as part of a petition for executive clemency," attorney Seth Waxman, told the justices in his appeal.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Stephen Hoffman, an assistant Texas attorney general, said investigation of those arguments "would either be redundant or fruitless," and called the appeals a delaying tactic.<br /><br />In his appeals, Wilkins had argued that his attorney ignored his wish to plead guilty and did not put on a vigorous defense and that an appellate lawyer had a huge conflict of interest, having already accepted a job with the prosecutor's office. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">30 convicted killers were executed in the U.S. last year, the lowest number since the early 1980s. 7 were carried out last year in Texas, the fewest since 1996.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">9 Texas inmates have already been scheduled to die in the early months of 2017.<br /><br />Wilkins becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas  and the 539th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 7, 1982. <br /><br />Wilkins becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1443rd overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. </div><br />Sources: Dallas Morning News, Associated Press, Twitter live feed, Rick Halperin, January 11, 2017<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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Texas executes Christopher Wilkins

Christopher Wilkins A Fort Worth jury sent Christopher Wilkins to death row for killing 2 men he admitted shooting over a $20 phony drug dea...

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Texas AG sues FDA for delaying import of death penalty drug

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4eBEUDKn7jC_gbbXo4_1WVg-feZQna8nMihXzUd6ApqMrnVtuVwhDgs1GEqLupZAzz-f2PAzwWXHZWSmPY3hr_5ROcx0AaAdz2xpTv7jOId8pWSM7eMKmQNYKmzMwqJS3Z3pt9Psq8Qk/s1600/FDA.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="191" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4eBEUDKn7jC_gbbXo4_1WVg-feZQna8nMihXzUd6ApqMrnVtuVwhDgs1GEqLupZAzz-f2PAzwWXHZWSmPY3hr_5ROcx0AaAdz2xpTv7jOId8pWSM7eMKmQNYKmzMwqJS3Z3pt9Psq8Qk/s400/FDA.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">AUSTIN (KXAN) — Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Tuesday his office has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for delaying the state’s importation of a drug used in capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The lawsuit argues the FDA’s claimed legal grounds for refusing the drugs’ entry into the United States are invalid, citing an FDA exemption for law enforcement purposes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Thiopental sodium, also known as Sodium thiopental, is part of the three-drug cocktail used in lethal injections.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In its December newsletter, the Council of State Governments said, while Texas has 317 inmates on death row, it only has enough of a key lethal injection drug to execute two of them, stemming from a nationwide shortage of the drug.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Attorney General’s Office is asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas to declare the FDA’s delay unlawful and compel the agency to make a final decision on the admissibility of the drug, which was detained by the FDA 17 months ago.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“There are only two reasons why the FDA would take 17 months to make a final decision on Texas’ importation of thiopental sodium: gross incompetence or willful obstruction,” said Attorney General Paxton. “The FDA has an obligation to fulfill its responsibilities faithfully and in a timely manner. My office will not allow the FDA to sit on its hands and thereby impair Texas’ responsibility to carry out its law enforcement duties.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In April 2016, the FDA <a href="http://kxan.com/2016/04/21/texas-under-fire-for-importing-lethal-injection-drugs/" target="_blank">blocked an appeal to bring in Sodium thiopental</a> from India. Experts in the FDA said there is not a legal use for the drug in the U.S.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Texas Department of Criminal Justice previously used the drug as part of a three-drug cocktail for executions. Since 2012, Texas has used a large dose of a single powerful sedative to carry out executions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The maker of the drug made it off limits to sell to the government for execution purposes. Texas has been using compounding pharmacies to make the drugs needed for executions..</div><br />Source: <a href="http://kxan.com/2017/01/03/paxton-sues-fda-for-delaying-import-of-death-penalty-drug/" target="_blank">KXAN</a>, Andy Jechow, January 3, 2017<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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Texas AG sues FDA for delaying import of death penalty drug

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Tuesday his office has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (...

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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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As use of death penalty declines, the case for its repeal grows stronger

<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/AVvXsEh84h15LtrghbRdHvF0Y1mpxUBQzkT__lpIR2crQ4KLTpf4ls030C79qejzPyFm654y7ea0Tw_KcDHAIFbUQvQc8hbAtrYL4sK02nRchVmUwu-GfrqqNGF1GK5E3jeC9AV77Gp-R-yZEdM/s1600/Huntsville+Unit+Texas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="The Walls Unit, Huntsville, Texas" border="0" height="277" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh84h15LtrghbRdHvF0Y1mpxUBQzkT__lpIR2crQ4KLTpf4ls030C79qejzPyFm654y7ea0Tw_KcDHAIFbUQvQc8hbAtrYL4sK02nRchVmUwu-GfrqqNGF1GK5E3jeC9AV77Gp-R-yZEdM/s400/Huntsville+Unit+Texas.jpg" title="The Walls Unit, Huntsville, Texas" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Walls Unit, Huntsville, Texas</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">The death penalty is rare, even in Texas, where just seven executions were carried out this year. In some places, it's almost nonexistent. In Dallas and Harris counties, not a single death sentence was handed down this year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">This is good news.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Executions are costly. Their value in deterring would-be murderers and others from committing their crimes is small. And they are disproportionately carried out against persons of color. Of the nine men sentenced to death in Dallas or Tarrant counties since 2012, all are African-American. In Harris County, 15 of the 18 more recent death sentences have been handed down against black defendants, the other three against Latinos.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Worst of all, an execution is the outcome of an error-prone system, and one that simply can't be undone once carried out.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That insight was at the heart of the ruling 45 years ago next year in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the death penalty violated the Constitution.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The penalty of death differs from all other forms of criminal punishment, not in degree but in kind," Justice Potter Stewart wrote in one of five concurring opinions in Furman vs. Georgia. "It is unique in its total irrevocability. It is unique in its rejection of rehabilitation of the convict as a basic purpose of criminal justice."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Four years later, the court ruled that with proper attention to racial fairness and other factors, the executions could resume. But ever since, Texas has had a starring role in demonstrating just how naive that second decision was.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's distressing to note that support for the death penalty remains strong in many states, including Texas (<a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/29/support-for-death-penalty-lowest-in-more-than-four-decades/" target="_blank">though that support is at its lowest level in decades</a>). There is hope in the<a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2015/12/30/editorial-could-texas-be-losing-its-appetite-for-the-death-penalty" target="_blank"> fact that actual use of the death penalty is fading fast. </a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the past five years, 26 inmates on Texas' death row have been removed. Eighteen saw their sentences reduced. Seven died in custody. One was exonerated and released.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Even Texas' famously tough-on-crime Court of Criminal Appeals has grown far more careful when it comes to executions. In the past two years, the court has issued a total of 15 stays of execution. In the three years before that, it averaged just one per year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nationwide, the use of the death penalty is also at a low.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's encouraging, too, to see <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2016/09/02/can-argue-whether-death-penalty-cruel-legal-certainly-unusual-fair" target="_blank">Justice Stephen Breyer continue his sometimes-lonely crusade </a>to convince the rest of the court to take up again, as they did in 1972 and 1976, the overall question of whether the Bill of Rights prohibits executions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The penalty is so rare and so random in its application, it should no longer be tolerated: "Individuals who are executed are not the 'worst of the worst,'" Breyer wrote Dec. 12, "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><br />Source: <a href="http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/2016/12/27/use-death-penalty-declines-case-repeal-grows-stronger" target="_blank">Dallas News</a>, Editorial, December 27, 2016<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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As use of death penalty declines, the case for its repeal grows stronger

The Walls Unit, Huntsville, Texas The death penalty is rare, even in Texas, where just seven executions were carried out this year. In some ...

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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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US capital punishment fall to 40-year low in 2016

<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkBu3-pmv1QknN8Gd_H9VQIr3726mikiS-OEZcOvhZm_oOxE16L-gYbwRdNrWCL8u_CyeolNlwykgiiV9BVyeaiUDvDPQf0WlY6baTOgppYaxivgX5cSlESRPWGBTDhHnTkNAE1U398a8-/s1600/21st+century.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkBu3-pmv1QknN8Gd_H9VQIr3726mikiS-OEZcOvhZm_oOxE16L-gYbwRdNrWCL8u_CyeolNlwykgiiV9BVyeaiUDvDPQf0WlY6baTOgppYaxivgX5cSlESRPWGBTDhHnTkNAE1U398a8-/s400/21st+century.gif" width="400" /></a></div><b>Fewer death sentences were handed down in the US this year than at any time in the last four decades, a study finds.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Only 30 such penalties were imposed in 2016, the lowest since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976 after a four-year hiatus.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Five states, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Florida and Missouri, carried out 20 executions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It continues a 20-year downward trend in US capital punishment, says the Death Penalty Information Center.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The new <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/" target="_blank">DPIC report</a> showed that not only have executions slowed or even halted in the vast majority of states, but juries and judges are sentencing fewer people to death.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This year, death sentences will be lower than at any other time in the modern history of the American death penalty," says Robert Dunham, executive director of the DPIC and lead author of the study. "That, I think, is a big story."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After the US death penalty was reinstated 40 years ago, the number of death sentences and executions began steadily rising.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 1977, 137 death sentences were handed down.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The trend peaked in the 1990s, with 98 executions in 1999 and 315 new death sentences in 1996.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Then the downward trend began.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 2016, only 30 new death sentences were handed down, and 20 executions took place.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That was the fewest number of executions since 1991.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of the five states that put inmates to death in 2016, Georgia led the way with nine executions, followed by Texas with seven, Alabama with two, and both Florida and Missouri executed one person.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">New death sentences are down 37% from 2015, according to the report, and fewer death sentences were imposed in 2016 "than in any other year since the Supreme Court declared US death penalty statutes unconstitutional in... 1972".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr Dunham points out that the low number of new death sentences was notable as well.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Georgia, for example, sentenced no-one to death in 2016.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Texas had four new death sentences, which is very low for the state," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Dallas and Harris counties, which is where Houston and Dallas are, imposed no new death sentences for only the second time since the 1980s."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The halt of executions in some states can be explained by the difficulty procuring legally acceptable <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36292193" target="_blank">drugs needed for lethal injections in the US</a>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Many pharmaceutical companies refuse to provide them, and the European Union banned the export of the drugs to the US in 2011.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Some states have resorted to clandestine deals with compounding pharmacies or different drug cocktails, and a series of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-27215508" target="_blank">botched executions</a> in recent years has raised legal and ethical concerns about these practices.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0FjVeBIOCT0IeRv_uebT-eiYv2P42FwBBXWfUeMy8YSLHLDLtBOUhkvPcYTzYfr0Q5ahR_lMvra7hNAhbOPm07AeUS2T6PRe2daWyfcH-CncI6zEWwATiHc7_ZsHeTBeizEplZ9fOpbLS/s1600/break.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0FjVeBIOCT0IeRv_uebT-eiYv2P42FwBBXWfUeMy8YSLHLDLtBOUhkvPcYTzYfr0Q5ahR_lMvra7hNAhbOPm07AeUS2T6PRe2daWyfcH-CncI6zEWwATiHc7_ZsHeTBeizEplZ9fOpbLS/s400/break.gif" width="400" /></a></div>Legal challenges that can take decades to resolve and exonerations around the country have also slowed executions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So far there have been 156 men and women exonerated from death row in the US.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Lawyers cost an awful lot more than prison guards, and there is just enough ambivalence for state killing as a criminal punishment to make the due process standard higher than for other kinds of punishment," says Frank Zimring, a death penalty expert and professor at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The combination of high expense and low assurance has sort of taken the enthusiasm out."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to various polls, American opinions are roughly split when it comes to the death penalty.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/29/support-for-death-penalty-lowest-in-more-than-four-decades/" target="_blank">Pew Research Center poll</a> shows approval for the death penalty has declined from a high of 80% in the 1990s to only 49% in favour now.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">However, Robert Blecker, a death penalty supporter and professor at New York Law School, says that the majority of Americans still favour the use of capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"[Approval may be] down from an all-time high of 80%, but it's also up from the 1968 low," he says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"California supported it, Oklahoma put it in its constitution, and Nebraska reversed its own legislature.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"How much clearer evidence could you possibly want as to where American public opinion is?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">During this year's election season, three US states had items related to capital punishment on their ballots, and in all three states, death penalty proponents won big on election night.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nebraskans voted to bring their death penalty back after legislators <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-32910693" target="_blank">banned the practice</a> in 2015.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Californians voted to speed up their executions rather than abolish them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Oklahoma, voters approved new constitutional language to protect the use of capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr Zimring concedes that the general public may not necessarily approve of the precipitous decline in the use of capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But he points out that when other nations abolished their death penalty it took some time for the general public to concur.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"When you study the western European decline of the death penalty, it turns out that public support for hanging people persists for almost 20 years after moral leadership abolishes the death penalty," he says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It takes a long time for public passions to catch up with the moral leadership of elites."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Although this year's figures continue to bolster the narrative that the American criminal justice system is increasingly turning away from the death penalty, the end of capital punishment may still be a long way off.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The end game is going to be long and expensive and in a deep way, unnecessary," says Mr Zimring.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That's billions of dollars and many too many executions in the American future."</div><br />Source: <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38371479" target="_blank">BBC News</a>, Jessica Lussenhop, December 21, 2016<br /><br /><br /><h2>The Strange Case of the American Death Penalty</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKwTmZcrR1QcpiLUbkxn6Jp_cHISVJuD2c8si4LKlVMC2Q_LQ79SVx2JJsdWv3QutacI-AciHorJQrt7FeW5EhT8Zw4CPG8Sq0_FEcBQLCQNXsUK_9gvhjg3aZSXbE7Kr7XXeaijeJF4dK/s1600/k5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKwTmZcrR1QcpiLUbkxn6Jp_cHISVJuD2c8si4LKlVMC2Q_LQ79SVx2JJsdWv3QutacI-AciHorJQrt7FeW5EhT8Zw4CPG8Sq0_FEcBQLCQNXsUK_9gvhjg3aZSXbE7Kr7XXeaijeJF4dK/s400/k5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>It’s a paradoxical moment in the history of the death penalty in the United States. The number of executions has dwindled to just a few, but the voters, even in the most liberal states, seem to want the punishment to remain on the books. That’s the message of the <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/" target="_blank">annual report</a> from the Death Penalty Information Center, which produces the most comprehensive analysis of the subject each year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The headline on the report—“Another Record Decline in Death Penalty Use”—notes that the remarkable fall in the number of executions and death sentences is part of a longer trend, one that continued this year. The numbers were the lowest in the modern era of the American death penalty, after a period, between 1972 and 1976, when the Supreme Court put a stop to executions. There were just twenty executions in the United States in 2016, down from a peak of ninety-eight, in 1999. Even more remarkable, just thirty people were sentenced to death this year, compared with three hundred and fifteen in 1996. Indeed, as the report further notes, “Fewer new death sentences were imposed in the past decade than in the decade preceding the Supreme Court’s invalidation of capital punishment in 1972.” The reduction in death sentences means that the decline in executions is likely to continue as well, because the pipeline of new cases is not as full.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Despite these numbers, death-penalty abolitionists also received a host of bad news this year. In 2015, after a long political struggle, the Nebraska state legislature (which is unicameral) repealed the death penalty. But supporters of capital punishment put the issue on the ballot in the 2016 election, and more than sixty per cent of the voters supported its restoration. Voters in California were asked to address two contradictory initiatives concerning the death penalty. One would have ended executions in the state once and for all; the other sought to remove some of the legal barriers that have prevented executions from proceeding quickly, or really at all, in the state. The abolition initiative failed, with fifty-three per cent of the voters opposed, and the law for expediting the death penalty passed, with slightly more than fifty-one per cent of the vote. (It’s not clear what, if any, practical difference passage of the initiative will mean. The legal standoffs in California are likely to continue. There are <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/state_by_state" target="_blank">seven hundred and forty-one</a> people on death row in the state, but there hasn’t been an execution there since 2006.)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The debate over the death penalty seems to have taken on some of the characteristics of the Presidential race this year, as a contest between populists and élitists. Judges play the part of the élites in this particular debate, and the judiciary, as a whole, has shown ever-greater hostility toward approving executions. This year, the Supreme Court ruled for prisoners in several high-profile death-penalty decisions, holding that racial bias infected jury selection, in Foster v. Chatman, a case from Georgia, and rejecting Florida’s system of allowing judges to impose the death penalty even when jurors support life in prison, in Hurst v. Florida. (The Florida legislature sought to correct the defects identified by the Supreme Court in the Hurst case, only to have the Florida Supreme Court overrule the new law as well.) Delaware’s Supreme Court also nullified its state’s death-penalty law this year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqOe-7Oh76c4SgqTgbQPvj9WuZvXdUNsVzT21T8yBzDqmoborj19YG7Orkhyphenhyphen0OskknQx8gVCBIh7VhTeBimD1pCwnaIPnruBRS4-MtZ-ySFncOH6CFrCpLMuzLVQgxXEINFTxNf9eu3Fg/s1600/right+trick.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="321" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqOe-7Oh76c4SgqTgbQPvj9WuZvXdUNsVzT21T8yBzDqmoborj19YG7Orkhyphenhyphen0OskknQx8gVCBIh7VhTeBimD1pCwnaIPnruBRS4-MtZ-ySFncOH6CFrCpLMuzLVQgxXEINFTxNf9eu3Fg/s400/right+trick.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>But, as the election results in California and Nebraska illustrate, the voters—the populists—continue to back the death penalty, as does the President-elect. (Donald Trump notoriously called for the execution of the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/donald-trump-and-the-central-park-five" target="_blank">Central Park Five</a>, fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-olds who were charged with a high-profile rape and beating, in 1989. Even though the five were later exonerated, Trump, during this year’s campaign, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/opinion/why-trump-doubled-down-on-the-central-park-five.html" target="_blank">reiterated his belief in their guilt</a>.) The Death Penalty Information Center report notes that public-opinion polls show some decline in support for the death penalty, but the opposition has never achieved close to a majority. And, notwithstanding ambiguous poll numbers, politicians from Trump to Barack Obama understand that support for the death penalty, at least in some form, is less politically risky than opposition to it. (Obama, for example, has supported executions for “extraordinarily heinous crimes.”) Trump’s victory, and those of other Republicans, can only reinforce that view.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Many factors have led to the decline in the death penalty in recent years: less crime over all, with less fear among the public as a result; DNA exonerations leading jurors to pause before imposing death; the reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to provide lethal-injection drugs and the resulting search (still under way) for a drug protocol that passes constitutional muster; the length and expense of the appeals mandated by the Supreme Court. All those reasons for the decline remain, but so, too, does the United States remain a country that has had the death penalty in effect for virtually all of its history. That’s not likely to change, either. The death penalty may keep shrinking, but it will probably never entirely go away.</div><br />Source: <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-strange-case-of-the-american-death-penalty" target="_blank">The New Yorker</a>, Jeffrey Toobin, December 21, 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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US capital punishment fall to 40-year low in 2016

Fewer death sentences were handed down in the US this year than at any time in the last four decades, a study finds. Only 30 such penalties ...

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