China admits death row organ use

China is trying to move away from the use of executed prisoners as the major source of organs for transplants.

According to the China Daily newspaper, executed prisoners currently provide two-thirds of all transplant organs.

The government is now launching a voluntary donation scheme, which it hopes will also curb the illegal trafficking in organs.

But analysts say cultural bias against removing organs after death will make a voluntary scheme hard to implement.

Thriving black market

About 1.5 million people in China need transplants, but only about 10,000 operations are performed annually, according to the health ministry.

The scarcity of available organs has led to a thriving black market in trafficked organs, and in an effort to stop this the government passed a law in 2007 banning trafficking as well as the donation of organs to unrelated recipients.

But in practice, illegal transplants - some from living donors - are still frequently reported by the media and the Ministry of Health.

Human rights groups have often criticised China for its lack of transparency over organ donation, but critics have focused particular concern on the use of body parts from executed prisoners.

In a rare admission of the extent to which this takes place, China Daily - citing unnamed experts - said on Wednesday that more than 65% of organ donations come from death row prisoners.

China executes more people than any other country. Amnesty International said at least 1,718 people were given the death penalty in 2008.

The China Daily quoted Vice-Health Minister Huang Jiefu as saying that condemned prisoners were "definitely not a proper source for organ transplants".

The new scheme is therefore designed to reduce the reliance on death row inmates, as well as regulating the industry by combating the illegal trafficking of organs.

The system will be piloted in 10 provinces and cities, and a fund will be started to provide financial aid to donors' families.

More on this story.

Source: BBC, August 26, 2009

Cameron Todd Willingham case: Expert says fire for which father was executed was not arson

In a withering critique, a nationally known fire scientist has told a state commission on forensics that Texas fire investigators had no basis to rule a deadly house fire was an arson -- a finding that led to the murder conviction and execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.

The finding comes in the first state-sanctioned review of an execution in Texas, home to the country's busiest death chamber. If the commission reaches the same conclusion, it could lead to the first-ever declaration by an official state body that an inmate was wrongly executed.

Indeed, the report concludes there was no evidence to determine that the December 1991 fire was even set, and it leaves open the possibility the blaze that killed three children was an accident and there was no crime at all -- the same findings found in a Chicago Tribune investigation of the case published in December 2004.

Willingham, the father of those children, was executed in February 2004. He protested his innocence to the end.

The Tribune obtained a copy of the review by Craig Beyler, of Hughes Associates Inc., which was conducted for the Texas Forensic Science Commission, created to investigate allegations of forensic error and misconduct. The re-examination of the Willingham case comes as many forensic disciplines face scrutiny for playing a role in wrongful convictions that have been exposed by DNA and other scientific advances.

Among Beyler's key findings: that investigators failed to examine all of the electrical outlets and appliances in the Willinghams' house in the small Texas town of Corsicana, did not consider other potential causes for the fire, came to conclusions that contradicted witnesses at the scene, and wrongly concluded Willingham's injuries could not have been caused as he said they were.

The state fire marshal on the case, Beyler concluded in his report, had "limited understanding" of fire science. The fire marshal "seems to be wholly without any realistic understanding of fires and how fire injuries are created," he wrote.

The marshal's findings, he added, "are nothing more than a collection of personal beliefs that have nothing to do with science-based fire investigation."

Over the past five years, the Willingham case has been reviewed by nine of the nation's top fire scientists -- first for the Tribune, then for the Innocence Project, and now for the commission. All concluded that the original investigators relied on outdated theories and folklore to justify the determination of arson.

The only other evidence of significance against Willingham was another inmate who testified that Willingham had confessed to him. Jailhouse snitches are viewed with skepticism in the justice system, so much so that some jurisdictions have restrictions against their use.

Samuel Bassett, an attorney who is the chairman of the commission, said the panel will seek a response from the state fire marshal and then write its own report.

Contacted Monday, one of Willingham's cousins said she was pleased with the report but was skeptical that state officials would acknowledge Willingham's innocence.

"They are definitely going to have to respond to it," said Pat Cox. "But it's difficult for me to believe that the State of Texas or the governor will take responsibility and admit they did in fact wrongfully execute Todd. They'll dance around it." Full story here.

Source: Chicago Tribune, August 25, 2009 ; Picture: Cameron Todd Willingham holds Amber, one of his three children who died in the 1991 Texas house fire he was convicted of setting. (Family photo)

Judge Keller's disappointing testimony

It was impossible not to gasp last week when Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller addressed the question of what she would do differently if she had a do-over in the execution of Michael Richard.

Nothing. That was the essence of Keller's answer at her misconduct trial. It is as disturbing now as it was when news broke of her infamous "we close at 5" directive to court personnel minutes before Richard's execution was scheduled to be carried out in September 2007.

Her defense is built on a thinly sliced interpretation of procedures that offend the expectation that Texas courts should be accessible and blindly fair.

Keller's supporters may ask what fairness Richard showed to 53-year-old Houston-area nurse Marguerite Lucille Dixon when he entered her home, raped her and shot her in the head. Answer: none. Nor have we seen evidence to question his guilt.

That's not the point. Instead, consider that the next person with a last-minute appeal might have compelling information about the miscarriage of justice. Anyone who is aware of Texas' record number of DNA exonerations should be mindful of that.

Keller asserts that Richard's attorneys should have known that her statement about closing pertained only to the courthouse doors and not to a duty judge who was working late. Appellate attorneys were having computer problems and were scrambling against the filing deadline. But it appears that even court personnel have had differing interpretations of the events of that evening.

No matter; as the presiding judge, she should have made sure there were no gray areas where life-and-death matters were concerned that night. Procedures guaranteeing last-minute access should be enunciated to any involved party as time runs out. The court must not assume general understanding and merely recite technicalities.

Revised court procedures in the wake of the Richard case suggested that the nine-member court knew change was due. Weeks later, the judges issued written guidelines including a new e-filing system for death appeals.

Despite those improvements made in her own court, Keller's testimony indicated no regrets about that night, amplifying her reputation as a pro-prosecution judge indifferent to fair play. Like it or not, she made herself the face of Texas courts in 2007. Unfortunately, her testimony last week did nothing to dispel the notion that ours is a callous system of justice.

Source: Dallas Morning News, August 25, 2009

My thanks to maligned Judge Keller

I'd like to express my gratitude to Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller.

She has made Texas' supreme court for criminal matters into a better institution.

Unfortunately, she didn't do it by bringing organizational skills to a court that must deal more than any other state court in the nation with the pressures of last-minute appeals in death penalty cases.

But she did it.

The firestorm of criticism that followed her decision not to keep the clerk's office open for a late filing, based on a U.S. Supreme Court decision from earlier in the day, of a man scheduled to be executed an hour after closing time, has produced some improvements.

According to her own testimony and that of other court officials during this week's four-day trial, the court had a protocol for dealing with execution day filings, but it was something of a secret.

For one thing, it wasn't written.

For another, the court staff was not given any formal training on it.

Part of the procedure was the appointment, on a rotating basis, of a single judge to whom all communications regarding the pending execution would be directed. But the name of that judge was not to be disclosed to anyone outside the court, including lawyers for the condemned man.

In Keller's 7 years as the court's chief judge, that was the state of things.

Now, due to the allegations that she violated that procedure by not referring the call seeking to file a late plea for a stay of execution to Judge Cheryl Johnson, the assigned judge for that execution day, everyone knows the procedures.

The court's judges, some of whom were waiting around in expectation of a filing and were angered to learn days later of Keller's actions, agreed to put the protocol in writing. And the protocol has been widely publicized in the controversy.

There is another improvement. Ed Marty, the general counsel who took the request to Keller rather than to Johnson (who testified she would have accepted late pleadings), retired.

His replacement, Sian Schilhab, said she contacts the appropriate attorneys days ahead of the prosecution to make sure they know she is available up until the execution takes place. She said she not only gives them her cell phone number, but forwards the office phone to her cell.

She also says all outside communications not only "clearly go to the assigned judge, but I try to communicate them to all the judges, or at least their staffs."

She said that's not because of the recent controversies, but because "I believe in more communication rather than less."

If Keller had instructed Marty to do that, we wouldn't have had this firestorm.

Keller's attorney argued this week that the defense lawyers had orchestrated media coverage creating the firestorm.

Truth in advertising

The coverage was not always fair and not always accurate, but I'd suggest that Keller herself made the ground fertile for belief that she would violate court policy to coldly reject the last-minute appeal.

When she first ran for the court in 1994 she wrote in the Dallas Morning News that she was "pro-prosecutor." It was truthful advertising.

When DNA evidence showed a man imprisoned for raping a girl who was also murdered did not contribute the semen, she ruled against his appeal, saying he might have worn a condom.

When prosecutors put on an expert in another case who testified a convicted man was a threat to society and therefore should get the death penalty because he was Hispanic, she voted not to require a new sentencing proceeding. The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed.

When a district judge ruled that the evidence "unquestionably established" that a man had been pressured into falsely confessing to raping his stepdaughter, Keller voted with the minority against his release from prison.

I'll say this for her. She is hard working. In the midst of this week's trial, she voted not to hear an appeal in a death penalty case. 6 of the 9 members of the all-Republican court voted the other way.

Source: Commentary, Rick Casey, Houston Chronicle, August 24, 2009

Former Death Row Warden Discusses the Impact of Executions on Correctional Officers

Dr. Allen Ault (left on picture) was the warden at the maximum security prison in Georgia where executions were carried out. He also served as Commissioner of Corrections during a lifetime career in the field. He is currently the Dean of the College of Justice & Safety at Eastern Kentucky University.

In the video accompanying this note, Dean Ault discusses the tremendous drain that carrying out executions had, and continues to have, on his life. He added, "I know I'm not the only one who has administered executions that felt the way I do. They all have shed a lot of tears."

He questions the value of the death penalty, and recognizes the difficulty that many politicians have in challenging this punishment, despite its obvious flaws. With respect to deterrence, he said, "I have a hard time believing that using premeditated murder and violence (executions), is a way to model behavior that would deter somebody else from doing it."

The video was made at the end of a six-week course on the death penalty at EKU and contains answers to questions that the students raised. To view the video (21 minutes), click here.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center, August 24, 2009

Ark. lethal injection suit to be heard in October

Whether Arkansas resumes executing death-row inmates could hinge on how justices on the state's highest court read 5 words.

Those 5 words "is to be carried out" sit near the beginning of a new law aimed at rendering the lawsuit over lethal injection by death-row inmate Frank Williams Jr. moot. State lawyers say it shows the law applies to all 40 men now awaiting execution on death row. However, Williams' lawyers have told the state Supreme Court that the law can't be applied retroactively in his case.

The high court has scheduled oral arguments for Oct. 8 in Williams' case, which has stalled executions in the state for a year. But if justices agree with state lawyers, they can issue a ruling beforehand to set the stage for Arkansas' first lethal injection since 2005.

Federal public defenders representing Williams filed the lawsuit in 2008, as their client faced a scheduled execution date. They argued the state prison system failed to follow a requirement that state agencies offer notifications and hold public hearings when they made changes to administrative rules. The prison system had altered its execution protocols without following those rules.

A lower court judge issued an injunction halting Williams' execution and the case quickly made its way to the state's highest court. While there, lawmakers this year passed a law freeing the state prison system from following the public notification and hearing rule when it came to execution procedures.

In filings to the court, Assistant Attorney General C. Joseph Cordi Jr. wrote that the new law specifically says that an execution "is to be carried out" by lethal injection. By using that phrase, Cordi said lawmakers declared their intention to have the new law apply to all those awaiting execution on the state's death row, regardless of when they were convicted.

"The act on its face is crystal clear that it applies to every inmate to be executed by lethal injection after the date of the statue's enactment," Cordi wrote.

Cordi said other aspects of Williams' suit, like challenging the 3-drug cocktail used in the lethal injection, also were addressed in the new law.

"An amendment that resolves the merits of a death-row inmate's claim moots the claim despite the inmate's hope to delay or avoid his execution through further litigation," he wrote in another filing.

Julie Brain, a federal public defender representing Williams, wrote that justices should find that the new law can't be applied to Williams now.

The state's "assertion that the lethal injection procedures 'are the same regardless of when a particular condemned inmate received his or her capital sentence ...' merely begs the question of whether the act may be retroactively applied," she wrote. "The answer to which, under this court's precedents, is a resounding 'no.'"

Justices previously scheduled oral arguments over Williams' lawsuit for May, but postponed the hearing and requested lawyers address how the new law affected the case. The Supreme Court scheduled the new oral argument hearing date last week.

The state has executed 27 death-row inmates since the Supreme Court allowed states to resume executions in 1976. The state's last execution took place in 2005, when officials executed condemned killer Eric Nance.

Williams, 43, previously faced a 2008 execution date that Gov. Mike Beebe postponed because of a lower court injunction issued over the lawsuit.

Williams was given the death penalty over the 1992 killing of Lafayette County farmer Clyde Spence. Spence had hoped Williams, a work-release prisoner at his farm, would one day serve as a farm foreman. However, after Spence fired him, Williams returned to the farm at night and shot him to death with a .25-caliber pistol.

Source for both: Associated Press, August 24, 2009

Thailand: Drug dealers put to death

2 convicted drug traffickers at Bang Khwang prison have been executed by lethal injection.

Bundit Jaroenwanit, 45, and Jirawat Poompreuk, 52, yesterday became the country's 5th and 6th people to be executed by lethal injection, which replaced death by shooting in 2003.

The atmosphere at Bang Khwang prison in Nonthaburi was subdued yesterday when the 2 learned they were about to die.

They were given 60 minutes to call or write to their loved ones. They were then offered a last meal and a chance to listen to a sermon from a monk invited from Wat Bang Praek Tai.

They were blindfolded and given flowers, candles and incense sticks before being taken to the execution chamber.

The two, their legs manacled, turned their faces towards the temple as they were laid out on beds.

They received 3 injections. The 1st was a sedative, the 2nd a muscle relaxant and the 3rd a drug that stops the heart beating.

Source: Bangkok Post, August 24, 2009

Iran: four hanged

August 20: Two men were hanged in the prison of Isfahan (central Iran) yesterday August 19, reported the government newspaper Iran.

According to the report, the men were identified as Mansour (51) and Meysam (24), and were convicted of drug trafficking and murder, respectively.

On the same day, two others were hanged in Tehran.

August 19: Two men were hanged in Tehran’s Evin prison today, reported the Iranian state run news agency ISCA news.

The men were identified as Moharamali (30) and Mehdi (29) and both were convicted of murder according to the report.

The report also says that five others, including Behnoud Shojaee (minor offender) were scheduled to be executed this morning but their executions have been postponed.

Another news agency ISNA had earlier today reported that no one was executed today.

Iran Human Rights, along with other human rights defenders and organizations had warned about the execution of Behnoud Shojaee and 6 others yesterday.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, the spokesperson of Iran Human Rights, said: "We regret the two executions that took place in tehran today. According to the official tolls, at least 119 people have been executed since the June 12. elections in Iran." He added "Efforts of the human rights defenders in Iran and international attention have given result and the minor offender, Behnoud Shojaee’s execution has been postponed once again."

Amiry-Moghaddam continued:"Behnoud has been close to execution at least 4 times before. Execution of Behnoud, who was a minor at the time of committing the alleged offence, is a clear violation of the international conventions that Iran has artified. We demand removal of all death sentences against more than 140 minors who are like Behnoud, on the death row in Iran today".

Source for both: Iran Human Rights, August 24, 2009

American Justice Is Not Blind, But It Is Truly Sick

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Federal District Court Judge Fernando Gaitan of the Missouri Western District Court have at least two things in common: they are both appointees of President Ronald Reagan, and they both think it's just fine for the US to execute innocent people. The same can be said for Judge C. Arlen Beam of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a recent dissent in a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling ordering a habeas hearing in federal court for South Carolina death row inmate Troy Anthony Davis, a man slated to die after being convicted for the murder of an off-duty Savannah police officer, Scalia wrote, "This court has never held that the constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent."

For his part, Judge Gaitan, in Missouri, had 2 shots at considering the case of Joseph Amrine, a death-row inmate slated to die for the killing of a fellow prisoner in a Missouri state prison. Amrine had been convicted of the knife slaying on the basis of the testimony of 3 alleged eyewitnessesall of them fellow prisoners.

When 2 of those witnesses later recanted (suggesting that it was the third witness who had actually been the killer), Judge Gaitan rejected the habeas appeal, arguing that the 2 recantations couldnt be believed, because the third witness had not changed his testimony. Later, when the third witness also recanted, Amrines attorney brought the case back to Judge Gaitan, but this time, the Judge again rejected the appeal, claiming that none of the witnesses was credible "because they are all criminals." (Which of course begs the question of why Amrine should have been convicted in the first place based upon the testimony of the same 3 witnesses.).

Amrine didnt get any help from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is also apparently packed with Scalia-like vampires. A three-judge panel on that court, which included Reagan-appointee Judge Beam, as well as Clinton appointee Diane E Murphy and George H. W. Bush appointee Judge Morris Sheppard Arnold, unanimously upheld Judge Gaitan declaring that even if the 3 recantations might suggest Amrine was innocent, he could not get a new hearing or trial because his attorneys should have been able to discover the evidence earlier through "due diligence." The judges, in rejecting Amrines appeal, wrote that, "even though convinced that had it been sitting as the trier of fact, it would have weighed the evidence differently," an appellate court had to defer to the determination regarding credibility of recanting witnesses made by a lower court judge.

That is, procedural issues and rules trump facts, even in a death penalty case.

Happily for Troy Davis, a frighteningly narrow majority on the US Supreme Court disagreed with Justice Scalias view of the Constitution. Happily for Amrine, who is now a free man, the Missouri State Supreme Court disagreed with both Judge Gaitan and the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals panel, concluding that "a showing of actual innocence acts as a 'gateway' that entitles the prisoner to review on the merits of the prisoners otherwise defaulted constitutional claim."

Justice Scalia's pinched view of the Constitution is that if it ain't written down in the document, it doesn't exist. So even though there is a clear outlawing in the Constitution against "cruel and unusual" punishment, he purports to be unable to see how that could be construed to include being executed for a crime you did not commit.

It should sicken every American that our judicial system could condone execution of people that even the judges themselves concede are likely or even certainly innocent, because of procedural rules and politically imposed deadlines and appeals limitations, such as those imposed by former President Bill Clinton's Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, passed in 1995 in the hysteria following the Oklahoma City bombing of the Murrah Federal Office Building.

I once had the grisly experience, back in 1995, of watching several doomed men being carted off by armed police in the back of a flat-bed truck for a date with a bullet to the back of the head on the execution grounds in Xian, China. I remember thinking at the time what a monstrous and uncivilized act this was. The trials in China are in name only, with the verdict pre-ordained, and any appeals, if they happen, perfunctory.

Yet how different are things here in the US? There is the same bloodthirsty slathering for public execution by the ghouls on the right, the same quiescence among the broader population. There is, perhaps one difference, and that is the political pandering to the death-obsessed by politicians who should know better. Those Reagan-appointed judges Scalia, Gaitan and Beamand the many like them on federal and state benches across the country, were appointed precisely because they wanted to grease the skids to the execution chamber, and President Reagan, like Nixon before him and the Bushes after him, have made advocacy of state-sanctioned execution a lynch-pin of their campaign efforts. But President Clinton was no different. He cut short his campaign for president so he could rush home to Arkansas to sign the execution warrant for a mentally impaired man, and later, pushed through the EDP Act to make appeals of death-row inmates much more difficult.

President Obama is not much better. While he has not yet signed on to any efforts to make executions easier, neither has he acted, as president, to correct the current abysmal situation, which has seen many people spend years or even decades on death rows, often coming withindays or hours or even minutes of execution before finally being found innocent, and which has surely led to many executions of innocent people over the years.

Disturbingly, Obama has use the argument of "public vengeance" to justify the death penalty, writing in his memoir, that while he believes the death penalty "does little to deter crime," he nonetheless supports it for crimes "so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment." At times like these, I am sorry I'm an atheist. It would be nice to think that there would be some special grim level of hell in store for the likes of Justice Scalia, Judge Gaitan, and Judges Beam, Arnold and Murphy, perhaps a row of cells from which they would be marched every few days to be strapped onto gurneys and administered an intravenous death potion, or into electric chairs through which a surge of high voltage would be sent, only to return to their cells for another round of waiting. Also for the likes of Nixon, Reagan, Clinton, the Bushes and, yes, Obama, who would be cast before howling mobs of the wrongly executed, who would call for their execution, after which they could be marched off to the same fate over and over.

Unfortunately, there is no such divine justice. Only the hope that one day, a more civilized and compassionate public will demand better of itself, its political leaders, and its judges.

There is no greater crime than the killing by the state of an innocent person, and yet, in America, such atrocities are not just happening, they are condoned by judges in the highest court of the land.

Source: The Public Record----Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003) and more recently of The Case for Impeachment (St. Martins Press, 2006) )

Ohio ex-executioner says EMT experience an asset

Known as Team Member 18, the now-former executioner testified in March in an ongoing federal case brought by Ohio death-row inmates. Separately, a state lawyer's legal opinion requested by the office that oversees EMTs said Wednesday that the state cannot stop emergency medical technicians from serving as members of Ohio's execution team.

"I have had to deal with death and dying on a daily basis as a paramedic," Team Member 18 testified.

He said the state never trained him in the use or makeup of the lethal drugs used in executions.

Instead, he relied on his EMT experience when trying to figure out if the first drug had put a death row inmate to sleep.

"Thirty years of experience in monitoring patients," he testified. "Watching for vital sign changes, watching for movement changes, just watching the person as I would if it was a person in my care*."

He said he didn't keep a tally of executions and couldn't always remember individual cases.

"I don't keep that close a track on it," he said. "It's a job I do, and I just don't try to recall."

U.S. District Court Judge Gregory Frost allowed the executioner and three other execution team members to answer questions anonymously and to sit behind a blackboard. Frost later ruled that Ohio's lethal injection system was flawed but not unconstitutional.

Jonathan Groner, an Ohio State University surgeon and former member of the board that regulates EMTs, maintains they are breaking the law by administering drugs beyond what their certification allows.

But Wednesday's legal opinion found the State Emergency Medical Services Board has no jurisdiction to investigate the issue because the technicians are not acting as EMTs when putting people to death. Instead, the EMTs are included on the state execution team because they possess skills such as inserting intravenous needles, not because they are working as EMTs under medical direction, the opinion said.

The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction has two certified EMTs on its execution team. Team Member 18, who retired last month, was replaced by another EMT.

Team Member 18 said he agreed to join the execution team in 1993 out of a belief that executions should be done as professionally and humanely as possible.

"I just felt, at that time, and always have, that it needed to be handled in a professional, humane manner, and that it should be someone with training," he testified.

The executioner oversaw 27 of 29 executions since the state began putting people to death again in 1999.

Team Member 17, a backup executioner who also inserted IVs in condemned inmates' arms, also testified he wasn't trained in using the drugs.

Mark Heath, an anesthesiologist at Columbia University Medical Center who has studied lethal injection cases across the nation, testified in the same case that the executioner shouldn't administer the drugs because he lacks training and understanding of how they work.

The prison system maintains execution team members are qualified, and the agency has no qualms about their training.

In May, North Carolina's state Supreme Court ruled that physicians cannot be punished for participating in executions. The court said the North Carolina Medical Board overstepped its power with a threat to discipline doctors who participate in executions.

On the Net: Capital Punishment in Ohio: http://www.drc.ohio.gov/Public/capital.htm

* Emphasis mine

Source: Associated Press, August 200, 2009

State Killing: Scalia Doesn't Care Whether You're Innocent, You Get Executed Anyway

In the middle of Justice Scalia's dissent in Troy Davis's case, a dissent that Clarence Thomas joined in, we have this remarkable, astonishing, shocking sentence:

“This court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a court that he is ‘actually’ innocent.”

I cannot believe that they wrote this in a Supeme Court opinion. And I'm not alone in thinking I would never, never, never see something like this in a published opinion.

Let's begin with the trial. The State of Georgia tried Troy Davis for murder and it got a conviction. And that conviction was upheld on appeal. In fact, there was nothing the matter with the trial, nothing wrong at all according to the appeals courts except one small thing. The jury convicted an innocent man.

Troy Davis was convicted of the capital murder of Mark MacPhail, an off-duty police officer who as then working as a security guard. You might think that convicting an innocent person was a serious problem with the trial. Unfortunately, Davis's persistent claims that he was innocent of the crime weren't enough to convince anyone. It was only later on, after the trial, after the appeals, that the ugly circumstances in the case emerged.

There were nine witnesses to the crime in which MacPhail was killed. Anthony Davis was apparently in a pool hall with a lot of other people. A man named Sylvester Coles was beating a homeless man outside; people including Davis emerged from the pool hall to see what was happening. MacPhail came to the aid of the person being beaten and was shot and killed. At trial Sylvester Coles was the prosecution's star witness. Seven other people said Anthony Davis committed the crime. The gun was never found. There was no physical evidence of any kind. That was the trial testimony, and it lead to a conviction and the death penalty. And to several affirmances on appeal.

And then, and then, and then, ut oh. Seven of the eight witnesses who claimed under oath and at trial to see Davis shoot MacPhail gave affidavits that their testimony at trial was false and they recanted their testimony. And some said that Coles was the actual killer and not Davis and that police coercion forced them to testify against Troy Davis instead of the real killer.

So Anthony Davis sits on death row. And he's facing execution. And the case goes to the Supreme Court. The majority, thank goodness, sent the case back to federal court for a hearing. Good. But Justices Scalia and Thomas dissented. And it's their dissent that makes me cringe.

Why? Evidently, in Scalia/Thomas World, if the state tries and convicts the wrong man, one who is actually innocent, and there's no Constitutional error committed in the trial according to the state courts, there's no constitutional problem with the state's killing him. Even if he's innocent. In other words, it's 100% legal, 100% ok to kill an innocent person. Law Professor Paul Campos explains:

Scalia takes the position that, from a legal perspective, it no longer makes the slightest difference whether Davis is innocent of the murder he was convicted of committing, and for which, in all likelihood, he will be executed. If a defendant got a fair trial in state court, there’s nothing the federal court can do, Scalia argues, to reverse that verdict—even if new evidence comes to light that convinces the court to a moral certainty that the defendant is innocent.

Scalia represents an extreme example of a certain kind of judge that positively revels in coming to conclusions that are morally revolting but “legally” sound. Judges of this type like these sorts of cases because they demonstrate that law is a supposedly nonpolitical and intellectually rigorous practice, rather than a touchy-feely exercise in doing what strikes the judge as the right thing.

What, after all, could be more nonpolitical and intellectually rigorous than executing an innocent man, simply because “the law” requires that result? In a perverse way, such bloody logic is a kind of advertisement for the supposed objectivity of the legal system, since we can assume that no sane decision maker would reach such a decision voluntarily. (The great legal historian Douglas Hay explained the 18th-century English practice of sometimes acquitting obviously guilty men on absurd procedural technicalities, such as incorrectly calling the defendant a “farmer” instead of a “yeoman,” in similar terms: “When the ruling class acquitted men on such technicalities they helped embody a belief in the disembodied justice of the law in the minds of all who watched. In short the law’s absurd formalism was part of its strength as ideology.”)


For more details on this case, and the recantations, see this.

I have written extensively about the barbarism that lies behind state killing. But I have never before seen anything quite like this statement from Justices Scalia and Thomas. It used to be a fundamental part of the law that it was better to let 99 guilty people go free than to convict 1 innocent person. In fact, the system of criminal justice in this Country was built on this very platform. But now, we have two Supreme Court justices writing that the death penalty can be upheld even when the person executed is innocent, that innocence just doesn't matter. Forget about the fact that if you're killing an innocent person, the person who actually did the crime hasn't been convicted.

That is chilling and simply disgraceful.

And it's another strong reason for ending state killing entirely. The machinery of death is an embarrassment to a civilized nation. Arguments like Scalia's and Thomas's reduce us to barbarians. And we're going to have evil, immoral arguments like these as long as there's a death penalty. That and we're going to continue to make it possible to kill innocent people.

Source: The Dream Antilles, August 20, 2009

Florida executes John Richard Marek

STARKE -- John Richard Marek was executed Wednesday for murdering a 45-year-old mother of two whose raped, tortured and strangled body was dumped in Dania Beach after her car broke down on Florida's Turnpike 26 years ago.

Marek, 47, died at 6:33 p.m. after receiving a lethal injection at the Florida State Prison.

He was condemned for the first-degree murder and kidnapping of Adela Marie Simmons, whose nude body was found the day after she climbed into a pickup truck to get help after a friend's car broke down on the turnpike in Palm Beach County in 1983.

Marek made a last statement before he died, but it was inaudible to members of the news media and witnesses, who included Simmons' son-in-law.

Marek's appeals were turned down by the U.S. and Florida supreme courts on Wednesday. He had claimed that the other man in the truck, Raymond Wigley, killed Simmons.

Martin McClain, Marek's attorney, tracked down inmates who said Wigley told them he was the killer. Wigley, who had received a life sentence, was murdered in prison in 2000.

Simmons and her friend Jean Trach were returning to Miami from a vacation in Clearwater on June 16, 1983, when Trach's car began stalling. As the Barry University co-workers neared Jupiter on the turnpike, the car wouldn't restart.

Marek and Wigley stopped their pickup truck and offered to take one of them to the next toll booth to call for help. Simmons volunteered over Trach's warnings.

A police officer stopped Marek and Wigley about 3:30 a.m. as they walked away from a Dania Beach lifeguard stand. They got into a pickup truck -- later determined to be stolen -- and drove away.

Simmons' body was found inside the lifeguard tower about 7 a.m.

That evening, Wigley was arrested in Daytona Beacha driving the truck. Inside was a gold watch, a gold pendant and gold earring belonging to Simmons, and a gun. Marek was arrested in Daytona Shores.

Marek testified that after they picked up Simmons, he fell asleep. When he awoke, he said the woman was not in the truck. He testified Wigley told him he had dropped her off at a gas station. He said he again fell asleep and that when he woke, he was on the beach.

Fingerprints found at the lifeguard station matched both Wigley and Marek, but only Marek's prints were found inside the observation deck, where the body was found.

Wigley testified that the victim was forced to perform oral sex and was repeatedly sexually assaulted.

Marek had a three-hour visit Wednesday from his girlfriend, Marion Dollinger from Eppelheim, Germany, said Gretl Plessinger, a Department of Correction spokeswoman. She said he was calm and quiet in the hours before his death.

Marek met with an Episcopalian minister in the afternoon. He ordered a last meal of a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich with mayonnaise and wheat bread, onion rings, french fries, blueberries and strawberries and whipped cream, and a Dr Pepper.

About 20 death penalty opponents gathered in a field outside the prison to protest the execution.

``People think that because we protest the death penalty we're in favor of what people did,'' said Martha Lushman, 47, of Palm Bay. ``No, we don't agree with what they did. They did wrong. But we don't believe -- I don't believe -- it's our decision to terminate their life.''

Marek's was the 68th Florida execution since the death penalty was reinstated in 1979, the 24th by injection and the second this year.

``It's a question of justice. The death penalty doesn't serve any use in our modern society. It should be abolished, at least in favor of life [in prison] without parole,'' said Joseph Koechler, 66, from Ormond Beach.

Source: The Miami Herald, August 20, 2009

Saudi man beheaded for double murder

A Saudi man who shot dead 2 compatriots was beheaded by the sword today in the holy city of Mecca in the west of the conservative kingdom, the official SPA news agency reported.

It quoted the interior ministry as saying the man, named as Ali Assiri, shot the 2 others dead in a dispute.

Saudi Arabia imposes the death sentence for rape, murder, apostasy, armed robbery and drug trafficking under the country's strict Islamic sharia law.

A total of 51 people have been put to death in Saudi Arabia in 2009, according to an AFP count. Last year, Saudi Arabia executed 102 people.

Source: Agence France-Presse

Ohio executes triggerman in murder-for-hire scheme

Ohio has executed the triggerman in a 1995 murder-for-hire scheme that killed a 66-year-old woman and severely injured her son.

33-year-old Jason Getsy was pronounced dead at 10:29 a.m. Tuesday in the death chamber at the Southern Ohio Correctional Institution in Lucasville.

Getsy was sentenced to die for fatally shooting Ann Serafino in a crime that targeted her son, Charles Serafino, in a dispute over a lawn care business.

Charles Serafino was shot 7 times but survived and witnessed Getsy's execution Tuesday.

Getsy becomes the 4th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Ohio and the 32nd overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999. The state has at least 1 execution scheduled for every month through next February.

Getsy becomes the 36th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1172nd overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Sources: Associated Press & Rick Halperin, August 18, 2009

Sotomayor’s first vote on death penalty

The newest Justice, Sonia Sotomayor, on Monday night cast her first vote in a death penalty case, joining three other members of the Supreme Court in dissent as the Court permitted the execution Tuesday of an Ohio inmate, Jason Getsy, 33. He was scheduled to die in Lucasville, Ohio, at 10 a.m. Tuesday.

The Supreme Court’s order is here. Sotomayor would have granted a stay of execution, along with Justices Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and John Paul Stevens. Sotomayor’s predecessor, retired Justice David H. Souter, frequently voted to postpone executions.

In the Court’s order, the Justices also denied Getsy’s petition for review, in Getsy v. Strickland (09-5935). There was no indication of dissent from the denial of review of the case itself.

The Ohio Parole Board, by a vote of 5-2, recommended to Gov. Ted Strickland that he commute Getsy’s death sentence to life in prison. The governor, however, refused, saying that the evidence of Getsy’s crime was too strong to warrant clemency. Getsy was sentenced to death for the 1995 murder of a Hubbard, Ohio, woman, Ann Sarafino. He also was convicted of the attempted murder of her son Charles.

Source: scotusblog, August 18, 2009

Iran: two men hanged

Iran Human Rights, August 15: Two men were hanged in Adelabad prison of Shiraz (southern Iran) early Wednesday morning August 12, reported the Iranian daily Etemad.

The men were identified as Hamed and Zaeem (Afghan citizen) and convicted of rape in two seperate cases.

The report didn’t mention age of the men.

Source: Iran Human Rights, August 15, 2009

Iran: 24 people hanged in Tehran prison

July 30, 2009: 24 people were hanged in the prison of Rajaee Shahr, at Karaj (west of Tehran), according to a report published by the state run Iranian news website "Borna news".

The report that was quoting Tehran’s vice-prosecutor Mahmoud Salar-Kia, wrote: All the 24 were sentenced to death convicted of drug trafficking, and their sentence had been approved by the Iranian Supreme Court.

None of those executed were identified by name.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, spokesperson of Iran Human Rights, said: “We are very concerned about the high number of executions. Number of executions in July are the highest monthly numbers in many years".

He added: "Most of those executed are not identified by name and we can’t know whether the charges mentioned in the reports published by the authorities are true. World community must condemn these executions which are meant to spread fear among the people.

Source: Iran Human Rights, 05/08/2009

New Hearing Ordered for Troy Davis

The Supreme Court, over two Justices' dissents, on Monday ordered a federal judge in Georgia to consider and rule on the claim of innocence in the murder case against Troy Anthony Davis (In re Davis, 08-1443) The Court told the District Court to "receive testimony and make findings of fact as to whether evidence that could have been obtained at the time of trial clearly establishes [Davis'] innocence."

Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented, and some of their arguments were answered in a separate opinion by Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justices Stephen G. Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The new member of the Court, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, took no part in the Court's action.

The action was highly unusual, because Davis had filed what is called an original writ of habeas corpus — that is, a plea for his release, filed directly in the Supreme Court rather than in lower courts. Justice Scalia noted in his dissent that the Court had not taken a similar step "in nearly 50 years."

The action also was unusual because the Court normally does not take actions of this significance during its summer recess.

The Court did not disclose how each of the Justices had voted, other than the dissents of Justices Scalia and Thomas. Presumably, however, an order of this kind would have required the approval of at least five votes. Justices Breyer, Ginsburg and Stevens presumably voted for the order; it is unclear how Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., or Justices Anthony M. Kennedy and Samuel A. Alito, Jr., voted, if they did.

Davis was convicted in 1991 of murdering an off-duty police officer, Mark Allen MacPhail. Since his trial, Davis has claimed, seven of the state of Georgia 's key witneeses have recanted the testimony they gave at the trial. Several other individuals have implicated another man — the prosecution' s key witness against Davis — as the shooter.

Source: scotus.blog, August 17, 2009

Backstory and reaction to denial of capital clemency in Ohio

As detailed in this post, yesterday Ohio Governor Ted Strickland denied clemency for death row defendant Jason Getsy despite the state parole board's recommendation for mercy based in part on the fact that Getsy was the only one of multiple persons involved in the crime sentenced to death. This local article about the decision details some input Strickland received and reactions:

"Justice won today," said Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins, who worked feverishly to persuade the governor to ignore the board's recommendation. "He made the decision to kill. This case is as bad as it gets," Watkins said. "This was just evil."

The prosecutor helped coordinate a petition drive that produced at least 2,000 signatures in favor of death, including 150 to 200 from the local General Motors plant. There was even a signature and a petition circulated by a juror who heard the Getsy case in the courtroom of Judge W. Wyatt McKay and found the then-19-year-old defendant guilty as charged and then recommended the death penalty to the judge, who later imposed it.

There were countless e-mails sent to the governor through his deputy counsel Jose Torres and letters from prosecutors across the state backing Watkins and his warning that freeing Getsy from the death penalty would set a dangerous precedent in many court proceedings. A police chiefs association also backed Watkins.

Finally, Watkins also got an endorsement from Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray, who in a last minute letter to Strickland said that Getsy "is not the kind of individual who is deserving of special mercy in the clemency process.

"Getsy's request for clemency should be evaluated based on his own culpability, and not based on what evidence was available to be presented or how it may have been interpreted in a co-defendant's case. We feel strongly that this is not a justifiable basis for commuting the death sentence on the facts of this case and we believe the precedent set by the Parole Board here would be detrimental to Ohio's system of justice," Cordray wrote.

The board earlier last month voted 5-2 for a rare reprieve after being convinced by Getsy's attorneys that their client didn't deserve death since the older co-defendant, John Santine, who planned the murder and hired Getsy and others didn't get the death penalty.

Strickland said in his statement Friday morning: "Substantial attention has been focused on the different sentences imposed upon Mr. Getsy and his co-defendant, Mr. Santine. Mr. Getsy and Mr. Santine had different roles in the murder. The fact that Mr. Santine was not sentenced to death is not, by itself, justification to commute Mr. Getsy's sentence. Mr. Getsy's sentence was based on his conduct and based upon our review, which included consideration of the differing Santine and Getsy sentences. I do not believe executive clemency is warranted. Although my decision is inconsistent with the recommendation of the majority of the members of the Parole Board, I appreciate and respect their thoughtful consideration and review of this difficult case."

Attorney John Shultz, 1 of a 3-member defense team that represented Getsy at trial, questioned the governor's decision: "I'm not shocked, but I am disappointed. When he (Strickland) ran for office he said he was opposed to the death penalty. He succumbed to the pressure of prosecutors and police chiefs. The governor is wishy-washy. I'm not saying he (Getsy) doesn't deserve to be punished. But, we have Charles Manson still out there and Getsy gets executed? That's what's on my mind today," Shultz said.

Source: Sentencing Law and Policy, August 16, 2009

Texas judge in the dock in death row case

"We close at 5:00 pm." 4 words were all it took for Texas judge Sharon Keller to extinguish the last hopes of death row inmate Michael Richard. He was executed hours later.

Scrambling to file a motion delaying his 2007 execution by lethal injection, Richard's defense lawyers say they ran into computer problems and called over to Keller's courthouse to ask it stay open a little later.

Her refusal prompted outrage, and on Monday the judge will find herself in the dock as she goes before a professional conduct panel to face claims that her decision was arbitrary and inappropriate.

The charges stem from September 25, 2007, when the US Supreme Court agreed to review the constitutionality of death by lethal injection -- the method by which Richard was to be executed at 6:00 pm that evening.

His lawyers say they immediately began drawing up motions asking for the execution to be delayed until the Supreme Court made a decision but started having computer problems shortly before 5:00 pm.

Richard's attorneys said Keller refused keep the courthouse open, though doing so is common practice in death penalty cases. The lawyers' attempts to obtain an emergency stay from the Supreme Court was rejected because they had not first obtained a ruling on halting the execution from a lower court.

Keller's decision will be reviewed by a conduct panel presided over by Judge David Berchelman and other peers in the Texas judiciary.

It is expected to review the case for 3 or 4 days and has the power to dismiss the claims against Keller, sanction her, or remove her from the bench.

Richard, who had been convicted of sexually assaulting and murdering a woman 20 years earlier, was administered a legal injection and pronounced dead at 8:23 pm that evening.

He was the 26th person to be executed in Texas in 2007, but even in a state that accounted for around half of all executions in the United States in 2008, the case caused an outcry.

The State Commission on Judicial Conduct concluded that Keller had engaged in "willful or persistent conduct that cast public discredit on the judiciary" and multiple newspaper editorials condemned her actions.

The US Supreme Court in 1972 effectively suspended the death penalty, but it was reinstated just 4 years later and 36 states still have the punishment on their books. Polling suggests 2/3 of the population still supports executions.

Abolition activists say lethal injections, the most common method of execution in the United States, is cruel. They say the injections can take a long time to end a life, and that an anesthetic administered with the injection can sometimes fail to work, making the process very painful.

In some states, the objections have been couched in economic terms, with lawmakers and death penalty opponents noting that carrying out an execution can be 10 times more expensive than imprisoning a convict for life.

But even where economic and moral reasons have driven a legislature to approve a death penalty ban, as in Connecticut in June, there are many that remain convinced that some crimes warrant execution.

The Connecticut bill to abolish executions was vetoed by the state's Republican Governor Jodi Rell, who said "there are certain crimes so heinous, so fundamentally revolting to our humanity, that the death penalty is warranted."

In the case that prompted Richard's lawyers to seek a halt to his execution, the Supreme Court eventually upheld the constitutionality of the legal injection.

Keller has rejected any allegations of wrongdoing, saying earlier this year: "By the time he was executed, Richard had 2 trials, 2 direct appeals, 2 state habeas corpus proceedings and three federal habeas corpus hearings and motions."

Texas state legislator Lou Burnam disagreed.

"It's one thing for a banker to close shop at 5 o'clock sharp. But a public official who stands between a human being and the death chamber must be held to a higher standard."

Source: Agence France-Presse, August 16, 2009

A Texas Judge on Trial: Closed to a Death-Row Appeal?

Soft-spoken and a devout Christian, Judge Sharon Keller presides as chief justice of Texas' highest criminal court. She's also known as "Sharon Killer" by her opponents, who are going to see her in court next week on charges of judicial misconduct. They charge that Keller refused a condemned man a last-minute appeal in 2007 and now she faces a trial in a San Antonio courtroom that could lead to her removal and will certainly focus wide attention on Texas' enthusiasm for the death penalty.

Keller finds herself at this pass because of a four-word sentence she uttered on September 25, 2007: "We close at 5." According to a newspaper interview with Keller in October 2007 and pretrial testimony last year, she said those words to Ed Marty, general counsel for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA). As the court's logistics officer, Marty had called the judge at the behest of lawyers for Michael Richard, 49, who had been on death row for 2 decades and whose execution was scheduled for that evening. The lawyers were allegedly having computer trouble and problems getting last-minute paperwork to the Austin court. Keller was reportedly at her home dealing with a repairman that afternoon when she she got the request and made her reply. Richard's lawyers failed to meet the deadline, and at 8:23 p.m. Richard was declared dead following a lethal injection.

An outcry followed. "This execution proceeded because the highest criminal court couldn't be bothered to stay an extra 20 minutes on the night of an execution," Andrea Keilen, executive director of Texas Defender Service told ABC News in 2007. Not only did Texas defense attorneys quickly file complaints with the state's judicial oversight commission, in an unprecedented move the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers joined the filing. Newspapers across the state and nation weighed in with scathing editorials and anti-death penalty campaigns went on the attack. The Texas Moratorium Network set up www.sharonkiller.com.

A year and a half later, in February, Keller was charged by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct with "willfill and persistent" failure to follow the CCA's protocols for last-minute appeals and for bringing public discredit on the court. Opponents say her actions displayed a dogmatic affinity for the death penalty. But her supporters, some of whom do not share her conservative views, contend she was following the rules and was not responsible for the shortcomings of defense attorneys. They also point to Keller's work doubling the number of public defenders' offices in Texas and boosting their budget from $19 million to $60 million.

A special master a judge named by the state supreme court for the occasion has been appointed to preside over the fact-finding trial. San Antonio District Judge David Berchelman Jr., a former member of the CCA, can either recommend to the commission that the charges be dismissed, or that Judge Keller be reprimanded or even removed from office by the state supreme court.

Though she handily won her elections to the bench, Keller exhibited little interest in politics during college, friends say. The bright daughter of a Dallas entrepreneur and famed restauranteur "Cactus" Jack Keller, she excelled in school and studied philosophy at Rice then law at Southern Methodist University. But 1994, while working as an appellate attorney in the Dallas prosecutor's office, she ran for a spot on the CCA and, thanks to a Republican landslide on the coattails of George W. Bush, won her seat. In her 2nd term she ran successfully for the top slot, the court's presiding judge. Keller has consistently been part of the court's conservative voting bloc and has said she saw her election as an opportunity to balance the high court after several decades of domination by judges inclined toward the defense bar. (However, there has always been a high degree of support for the death penalty even among Democratic judges in Texas.)

The genteel-looking Keller is expected to put up a fight, even though, so far, she has been silent on the upcoming trial. In a written response to the charges, she derided the defense attorney's claims that computer trouble delayed their paperwork: "It did not take a computer to prepare and timely file...it could have been hand written and the court would have accepted it as Judge Keller informed the Commission."

She will also defend herself by discussing the man she is accused of wronging: the executed Michael Richard. Richard has a long legal history and a criminal record that evokes little sympathy. "By the time he was executed," Keller wrote in her response to the charges, "Richard had two trials, 2 direct appeals (including to the United States Supreme Court), two state habeas corpus proceedings and 3 federal habeas corpus hearings or motions." She added that the charge against her that Richard was not accorded access to open courts or the right to be heard "is patently without merit."

In 1986, 2 months after being released from his second prison term, Richard killed Marguerite Lucille Dixon, 53, a nurse and mother of seven. Dixon had invited him in for a cold glass of water after Richard had knocked on her front door and asked if her van was for sale. 2 of her children found her. She had been sexually assaulted, then killed and her van and television stolen. A year later, Richard was on death row. After confessing, Richard claimed he was innocent, but his appeals centered on a history of alleged family abuse and his supposed IQ of 64. He told reporters he had learned to read and write on death row.

But the handling of Richard's appeals process is what is being contested by Keller's opponents. Richard won a new trial from the CCA because the alleged abuse he had suffered at the hands of his father had not been considered in his 1st trial, according to the appellate record. But Richard was convicted again in 1995 and once again given the death penalty, even after his mother and sister were allowed to testify about the alleged abuse during the punishment phase of the trial. Following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the execution of mentally retarded prisoners, his lawyers appealed for another trial based on his alleged IQ level. The CCA turned him down and that appeal was ongoing when the Supreme Court suddenly opened a new avenue for appeal on the day Richard was scheduled to die.

The high court announced it had agreed to hear arguments in Baze v Rees, on whether Kentucky's use of lethal injections (the same method Texas uses) violated constitutional proscriptions against cruel and unusual punishment. Richard's attorneys with the Texas Defender Service hoped to use the Baze case to win a delay, but they would have to go through the CCA in Austin first before approaching the Supreme Court for a stay and, as the execution was looming, they would have to act very quickly. Frantically trying to assemble their paperwork the CCA did not permit e-mail filings, but now does lawyers in Houston and Austin conferred over the phone, back and forth. They claimed they were further slowed by computer failures, an issue on which experts on both sides are expected to testify.

One issue is whether Keller was emphatically rejecting any pleadings to the court, or simply noting that the clerk's office closed at 5 p.m., as required by state law. Keller's attorneys will most likely argue the latter, saying that everyone knows that Texas appellate law provided for after-hours filings directly to judges. Friends said Keller was bewildered by the fallout. In the days just after the event, she told the Austin American-Statesman that she was not given a reason why the attorneys wanted the clerk's office to stay open. "They did not tell us they had computer failure and given the late request, and with no reason given, I just said, 'We close at 4.' I didn't really think of it as a decision as much as a statement," the newspaper quoted Keller as saying.

Keller has turned to noted defense attorney Charles "Chip" Babcock he represented Oprah Winfrey in 1998 when the talk show host was unsuccessfully sued for slander by Texas cattlemen. Babcock told the Austin American-Statesman he will question the "myth" of the computer problem and the last-minute actions of Richard's appellate lawyers. "I think our version is going to be that they just didn't do their job that day," Babcock said. It is a tactic that Neal Manne, representing the Texas Defenders Service, rejects as a "sideshow" designed to deflect from the real issue Judge Keller's actions that afternoon.

One sobering what-if: even if Richard had gotten his appeal accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court, he would most likely have extended his life by only 8 months. The high court eventually upheld the constitutionality of Kentucky's use of lethal injections.

Source : TIME Magazine, August 16, 2009

Lawyer: Four killers of U.S. official could escape death

KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Four men convicted of murdering a U.S. aid official and his driver in Khartoum could escape the death penalty if the family of the American victim rescinded its request for execution, the defense lawyer said Monday.

The four were condemned to hang for killing John Granville, 33, who worked for the U.S. Agency for International Development, and his driver, Abdelrahman Abbas Rahama, 39.

Under Sudanese law, the families of murder victims can choose blood money or the death penalty for retribution.

Granville's mother, Jane, said in a letter read after the sentencing in June that she preferred the killers be jailed for life, but because this option had not been offered she backed the death penalty.

Defense lawyer Adil Abdelgani told Reuters the father of the driver had waived his right for execution, prompting the court to seek the view of Granville's family again.

"They will not issue a new sentence until they hear the views of the family of the late Granville. If they ask for the death penalty, they will get it," Abdelgani said.

He said court could still to decide to imprison the men, which he said would be a sentence based on the principle of a punishment "in the public interest."

Granville was the first U.S. official to be killed in Khartoum for more than 30 years. He was returning home from New Year celebrations on January 1, 2008, when he and Rahama were shot. Granville was from near Buffalo, close to New York city.

Lawyers said the four men, all in their 20s and 30s, shouted Islamic slogans after the killing.

Source: Reuters, August 10, 2009

China: former head of Beijing airport executed

August 7, 2009: the former head of Beijing airport's management company was executed in China for corruption, state media reported.

An intermediate court found 60-year-old Li Peiying guilty in February of accepting almost $4 million in bribes and embezzling about $12 million in public funds over the past 14 years. It is unknown when the Supreme Court ruled or what method of execution was used.

Sources: Associated Press, 07/08/2009

Sotomayor Confirmed by Senate, 68-31

WASHINGTON — Voting largely along party lines, the Senate on Thursday confirmed Judge Sonia Sotomayor (pictured) as the 111th justice of the Supreme Court. She will be the first Hispanic and the third woman to serve on the court.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was expected to administer the oath of office to Judge Sotomayor, 55, in the next few days, with a formal ceremony likely in September. She succeeds Justice David H. Souter, who retired in June.

Democrats celebrated the successful nomination and relatively smooth confirmation process as a bright spot in a summer when they have been buffeted by several challenges, including rocky progress on their attempts to overhaul the nation’s health care system, President Obama’s falling approval ratings, the climbing unemployment rate and other lingering economic problems.

Shortly after the vote, President Obama said he was "deeply gratified" and confident that Judge Sotomayor would become an outstanding justice. The ideals of "justice, equality, opportunity" that guide the high court are the very ones that made the judge’s "uniquely American story" possible in the first place, the president said.

Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation was never in much doubt, given Democrats’ numerical advantage in the Senate. But the final vote — 68 to 31 — represented a partisan divide. No Democrat voted against her, while all but 9 of the chamber’s 40 Republicans did so. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, is ailing and did not vote.

During three days of debate on the Senate floor, Republicans labeled Judge Sotomayor a liberal judicial activist, decrying several of her speeches about diversity and the nature of judgments, as well as her votes in cases involving Second Amendment rights, property rights and a reverse-discrimination claim brought by white firefighters in New Haven.

“Judge Sotomayor is certainly a fine person with an impressive story and a distinguished background,” the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, said this week. “But a judge must be able to check his or her personal or political agenda at the courtroom door and do justice evenhandedly, as the judicial oath requires. This is the most fundamental test. It is a test that Judge Sotomayor does not pass.”

But Democrats portrayed Judge Sotomayor as a mainstream and qualified judge whose life — rising from a childhood in a Bronx housing project to the Ivy League and now the Supreme Court — is a classic American success story. And they called her judicial record moderate and mainstream.

“Judge Sotomayor’s career and judicial record demonstrates that she has always followed the rule of law,” Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Thursday. “Attempts at distorting that record by suggesting that her ethnicity or heritage will be the driving force in her decisions as a justice of the Supreme Court are demeaning to women and all communities of color.”

From the moment Mr. Obama chose her in May, many political strategists warned Republicans that opposing the first Latina nominated to the Supreme Court would jeopardize the party in future elections. In the waning days of the debate, some Democrats sought to portray Republican opposition as a grave insult to Latinos.

“Republicans will pay a price for saying ‘no’ to this judge,” Senator Robert Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey, said in Spanish at a news conference Wednesday.

And in July, the National Rifle Association, which historically has stayed out of judicial nomination fights, came out against Justice Sotomayor and said it would include senators’ confirmation vote in its legislative scorecard on gun-rights issues for the 2010 election — a pointed threat to Democrats from conservative-leaning states.

But attempts to appeal to interest-group politics in the confirmation process largely faltered.

The final vote was “a triumph of party unity over some of the interest group politics that you would have expected to play a bigger role,” said Curt Levey, executive director of the conservative Committee for Justice, which opposed Judge Sotomayor’s confirmation.

Many Republicans took pains to emphasize that their vote against Judge Sotomayor did not mean they were anti-Latino. They praised her credentials and her biography, saying they were troubled only by what they said was her judicial philosophy.

Before announcing his opposition to her nomination, Senator John McCain of Arizona, last year’s Republican presidential nominee who has been sympathetic to calls by Latinos and others for reforming the nation’s immigration laws, first described her as an “immensely qualified candidate” with an “inspiring and compelling” life story. And he dwelled on his support for Miguel Estrada, an appeals-court nominee of President George W. Bush whom Democrats blocked from a vote even though “millions of Latinos would have taken great pride in his confirmation,” Mr. McCain said.

Many other Republicans echoed Mr. McCain’s approach in explaining their votes. On Thursday, for example, Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah, spoke at length about the “unfair and disgraceful” treatment of Mr. Estrada, while criticizing Judge Sotomayor’s record.

“I wish President Obama had chosen a Hispanic nominee whom all senators could support,” Mr. Hatch said.

Juan Hernández, who served as Hispanic outreach coordinator for Mr. McCain’s presidential campaign, said most Republicans had not done enough to persuade Hispanics that they were welcome in the party.

“It’s not good enough to give two or three lines about Hispanics and then say, ‘No, I’m not going to vote for Sotomayor,‘ “ he said. “We’re just losing Hispanics left and right. It’s amazing, in the Republican Party — we’re doing it to ourselves.”

But Manuel A. Miranda, chairman of the Third Branch Conference, a coalition of conservatives who opposed the Sotomayor nomination, said Hispanics were ideologically diverse and would understand that Republican opposition to a particular liberal-leaning judge did not mean they were hostile to Hispanics — especially since her confirmation hearing was civil, he said.

“Hispanics are not going to be offended by the opposition because Republicans didn’t torment her,” Mr. Miranda said. “Republicans can take this vote because they treated her well.”

For many Hispanic voters, the symbolism of the first Latina joining the Supreme Court — and the memory of who opposed her — could be all that lingers, said Janet Murguía, president of the National Council of La Raza, an Hispanic advocacy group.

“This is a singularly definitive historic moment,” she said. “So it is a vote, I think, that will matter to the Latino community and will be remembered by the Latino community.”

What also remains to be seen is whether Democratic senators — especially those from conservative-leaning states and those who have received high ratings from the National Rifle Association in the past — will pay a political price for voting to confirm Judge Sotomayor despite the group’s opposition.

Andrew Arulanandam, an N.R.A. spokesman, declined to comment about the vote, but he did say it was too early to know how much weight his group would give to the Sotomayor vote when putting together its scores and endorsements for the 2010 election cycle.

Still, despite the seeming impotence of the gun-rights group’s ability to intervene in the nomination fight, Mr. Miranda said he believed the threat of lower ratings might have had led more Republicans to vote against Judge Sotomayor, noting that many had cited her alleged lack of support for Second Amendment rights in explaining their votes.

“That was a seismic shift,” Mr. Miranda said.

Matthew Dowd, a former political adviser to Mr. Bush who had warned Republicans to be civil, disagreed. He said the Supreme Court confirmation process had simply become increasingly polarized along party lines, regardless of a nominee’s qualifications or the stance of groups like the National Rifle Association.

“My view is that gun rights had nothing to do with it,” he said. “Supreme Court nominations have become dodgeball games, with Democrats lining up on one side and Republicans lining up on our side.”

Source: The New York Times, August 6, 2009

Japan's first postwar jury convicts man of murder

Aug 6th, 2009 TOKYO -- Japan's first jury trial since World War II concluded Thursday with a mixed group of citizens and professional judges convicting a man of murder and sentencing him to 15 years in prison.

The ruling was the first under the new Japanese jury system, a major overhaul of the country's legal framework that is expected to speed up trials and offer greater transparency.

The system pairs six citizens with three professionals, and the nine together decide both guilt and sentencing. All nine are considered judges. Until now, all trials were heard by only professional judges.

The trial took place in the Tokyo District Court and found 72-year-old Katsuyoshi Fujii guilty of murder in the fatal stabbing of a 66-year-old neighbor in May. Fujii had pleaded guilty but was asking for leniency in sentencing.

Murder carries a maximum penalty of death in Japan, although it is rare in cases involving a single victim.

The verdict and sentencing came just four days after the trial opened Monday, with the new process streamlined to allow the citizen judges to quickly return to their lives. Traditional Japanese trials had long been criticized as taking years to reach a conclusion.

Japanese juries are expected to hear about 2,000 to 3,000 cases per year, all involving serious crimes such as murder and kidnapping. About 300,000 candidates are being randomly selected from eligible voters nationwide to serve jury duty each year.

Still, some Japanese are reluctant to serve, in part because they may have to decide on capital punishment in a murder case.

Japan launched a jury trial system in 1928, but dropped it in 1943 as the country headed into chaos with World War II. The system was never popular because legal professionals opposed allowing regular people decide guilt.

Source: AP, August 5, 2009

India to execute 2003 bomb trio

A court in India has sentenced to death three people for carrying out bombings that killed more than 50 people in Mumbai (Bombay) in 2003.

Haneef Sayyed, his wife Fahmeeda and Ashrat Ansari were convicted last month of murder and conspiracy.

The explosions at the famous Gateway of India landmark and a busy market shocked the country and caused carnage.

They were said to be in retaliation for the deaths of Muslims during riots in Gujarat state the year before.

Hundreds have been killed in attacks in Mumbai in recent years.

Devastating

"The court has given death sentence to all three," chief public prosecutor Ujjwal Nikam said.

"They wanted to target religious structures in the city. The responsible have been brought to book."

The double car bombing in August 2003 left devastation at the Gateway of India and the Zaveri Bazaar market near the Mumba Devi temple in central Mumbai.

About 180 people were injured.

The three defendants, all of them from Mumbai, were charged under India's Prevention Of Terrorism Act, which has since been repealed.

Two others were accused - Mohammed Ansari and Mohammed Hasan. They were discharged after a review by the special court last year.

The three defendants were convicted of plotting the bombings in co-ordination with the Pakistan-based Islamic militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT).

LeT is also accused of carrying out other attacks in India in recent years, including the gun and bomb assault on Mumbai last November.

The judge said all three defendants were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, which they denied.

Source: BBC NEWS, August 5, 2009

China executes 2 for defrauding investors

China executed two business people for defrauding hundreds of investors out of more than $127 million, calling the scam a serious blow to social stability, state media said Thursday.

China puts to death more people than any other country, although last month a high official for the Supreme People's Court, which reviews every death sentence, said the punishment should be used more sparingly.

Though usually reserved for violent crimes, death sentences are also applied for nonviolent offenses that involve large sums of money or are seen to threaten social order.

The two were executed Wednesday.

China's highest court said the fraud had "seriously damaged the country's financial regulatory order and social stability," the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The report said Du Yimin, a beauty parlor owner from eastern Zhejiang province, collected more than 700 million yuan ($102.5 million) from hundreds of investors by promising them monthly returns of up to 10 percent from investments in beauty parlors, real estate and mining businesses owned by her company. She spent most of the money on houses, cars and luxury items, Xinhua said.

The second defendant, Si Chaxian, collected 167 million yuan ($24 million) from 300 people by saying they could receive interest of up to 108 percent.

Xinhua said 270 million yuan ($39.5 million) was still missing.

The two were sentenced by the Intermediate People's Court in the eastern city of Hangzhou.

Source: The Associated Press, August 5, 2009

Iran hangs 24 drug traffickers 'in mass execution'

TEHRAN — Iran hanged 24 convicted drug traffickers in a prison last week in one of the country's biggest mass executions, the Etemad newspaper reported on Wednesday.

"On Thursday, 24 international drug traffickers were hanged in a prison in Karaj," deputy Tehran prosecutor Mahmoud Salarkia was quoted as saying. "Their execution was approved by the supreme court."

The report did not identify any of those sent to the gallows in Karaj, a town west of Tehran.

The latest hangings bring to at least 219 the number of people executed in the Islamic republic so far this year, according to an AFP count based on news reports.

They were the second such executions in about a month in the same prison, where the Iranian authorities hanged 20 drug traffickers on July 4.

In July last year, Iran hanged 29 people who had been convicted of various crimes, including murder, rape and drug trafficking. It was the largest mass execution in recent years.

In January last year, 13 people were hanged, including a mother of two found guilty of murdering her husband.

In 2008, Iran executed 246 people, second only to China.

Tehran says the death penalty is a necessary tool for maintaining public security and is only applied after exhaustive judicial proceedings.

Murder, rape, armed robbery, homosexuality, drugs trafficking and adultery are all punishable by death in Iran.

Source: AFP, August 5, 2009

China: man who confessed to a murder while innocent man was wrongly executed is still awaiting trial

BEIJING — A man who confessed to a murder for which an innocent man was wrongly executed is still awaiting trial in China, four years after admitting his guilt, a report said Wednesday.

Hugejiletu was put to death in June 1996 for the rape and murder of a woman in the toilet of a textile factory in Hohhot, capital of the northern region of Inner Mongolia, the Beijing News reported.

Hugejiletu, who had reported the case to police, had maintained he was innocent despite attempts to get him to confess.

In October 2005, a man named Zhao Zhihong was arrested by police and confessed to killing 10 people in Inner Mongolia, including the woman murdered in the factory, the state-run newspaper said.

However, nearly four years later Zhao remains in detention and has not been brought to trial despite efforts by Hugejiletu's parents to clear their son's name, it said.

In 2006, the local judicial department set up a special investigation group to review the case but it has not made any progress, the paper said.

"Every time they told me that they sympathised with my son and my son's death was unjust. But they never gave us any hope," Hugejiletu's parents were quoted as saying after a second visit to the regional high court.

The paper said Yang Chengxun and Wu Guoxing, criminal investigators with the ministry of public security, recently told reporters: "Hugejiletu's case is wrong, Zhao Zhihong must be the real murderer."

The case only came to national attention after being reported by local press in Inner Mongolia.

China has slowly been reforming its death penalty system after acknowledging several miscarriages of justice.

At the beginning of 2007, the Supreme People's Court began reviewing every death penalty case rather than allowing lower courts to issue the final judgement -- a move that China says has led to fewer executions.

In 2008, more than 1,700 people were put to death in China, according to Amnesty International. China does not publish data on executions, and rights groups say the number could be much higher.


Source: Associated Press, August 5, 2009

Kenya: 4,000 death sentences commuted to life emprisonment

August 3, 2009: Kenya's more than 4,000 death row inmates all will have their sentences commuted to life imprisonment, President Mwai Kibaki announced, describing their wait to face execution as "undue mental anguish and suffering."

No death sentence has been carried out in the past 22 years in the East African nation.

Kibaki said he made the decision following advice of a constitutional committee and that he was commuting the sentences using powers provided for under Kenya's constitution.

"Extended stay on death row causes undue mental anguish and suffering, psychological trauma (and) anxiety while it may as well constitute inhuman treatment," the president said in a statement.

Kibaki noted that the decision did not in any way suggest the abolition of the death penalty but said he had directed the government to assess whether the punishment was having any impact on the fight against crime.

Source: Ap, 03/08/2009

Saudi Arabia: Nigerian national executed for murder

August 2, 2009: Nigerian national Qorbi bin Musa Adam was beheaded by the sword in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for murdering a Saudi man after robbing him.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement carried by the official SPA news agency that Adam beat Ibrahim al-Assiri, bound his hands and feet and stuck a tape over his mouth. Assiri suffocated to death.

Source: Agence France Presse, 02/08/2009

Iran: new hangings

Iran Human Rights, August 4: Two people were hanged in the prison of Boroujerd, (Lorestan province, western Iran) early Monday morning August 3, reported the Iranian daily Kayhan.

The men, who were not identified by name, were convicted of raping a woman, according to the report.

Iran Human Rights, August 3: Three men were hanged in the prison of Hamedan, western part of Iran, reported the state run news agency ISCA news today.

All the three were convicted of rape, in two different cases, said the report.

None of the men was identified by name, and Iran Human Rights cannot confirm that they were convicted of the alleged charges.

Source: Iran Human Rights, August 5, 2009

The number of the executions has increased significantly in Iranian prisons since the pro-democracy demonstrations started after June 12 elections.

Iran Human Rights, August 3: Two men were hanged in the prison of Isfahan, reported the Iranian daily Kayhan today.

One of the men was identified as "Hassan R." (33) convicted of drug trafficking while the other was identified as Ghorbanali M (22) convicted of a murder two years ago.

The report didn’t mention when exactly the executions took place. The state run news agency Fars, published the news of Ghorbanali’s execution on Sunday August 2.

Iran Human Rights, August 5, 2009