Pharma giant Hospira fails to act on paralysis drug responsible for ‘torturous’ executions

Global pharmaceutical firm, Hospira, is now the only company supplying US execution chambers with the paralysis drug used in lethal injections. Pancuronium bromide is the second drug in the lethal injection ‘cocktail’ and serves to paralyse the prisoner before the lethal dose of potassium chloride is administered.

 

Israeli manufacturer, Teva, recently became the latest manufacturer to exit the execution drug trade, leaving Hospira solely responsible for the US supply of the drug. According to expert anaesthesiologist, Dr. Mark Heath, Pancuronium bromide serves no medical purpose in the lethal injection procedure, but rather a ‘cosmetic’ purpose, serving to mask any possible suffering of the inmate. If not properly anesthetised by the first drug in the cocktail, a prisoner will be paralysed by the pancuronium bromide, unable to move, speak or even motion that something has gone wrong. Dr. Heath attests ‘there is no dispute that the asphyxiation caused by pancuronium and the caustic burning sensation caused by potassium would be agonizing in the absence of adequate anesthesia’.

Earlier this month, legal action charity Reprieve wrote to Hospira to draw their attention to the issue. They offered to assist Hospira in creating a new distribution system which would allow the company to control who is able to use their product and for what purpose. Reprieve recently worked successfully with Danish manufacturer Lundbeck to restrict the distribution of pentobarbital, a product which was also being used in executions. Lundbeck’s effective action means that US prisons are now blocked from buying their drugs for use in executions. Hospira, a company which has long stated its opposition to the use of its drugs in executions, could take similar steps to prevent such abuse. However, they have not replied to Reprieve’s letter and offer of assistance.

 

On average, it takes an anaesthesiologist 5,110 days’ training before he is fully qualified to administer anaesthesia in hospitals; prison wardens are given an average of 2.5 days’ training before they are deemed qualified to administer anaesthesia in lethal injection procedures. Little surprise that executions are so frequently ‘botched’. If the first drug, the anaesthetic, is not properly administered, the prisoner remains conscious as the second and third drugs are injected, causing ‘agonizing pain’. The phenomenon has been likened to that of ‘anaesthesia awareness’ in surgery. Victims of anaesthesia awareness testify that the pain and terror is ‘cruel beyond description’.  

Reprieve investigator Maya Foa said: "Hospira’s silence on this issue is deeply disturbing. The potential for torture associated with this illegitimate use of their drugs is immense. Indeed, the American Veterinary Association has expressly condemned the use of paralytic agents in animal euthanasia. That prisoners are treated worse than animals by the state is scandalous; that healthcare provider Hospira should be complicit in this is nothing short of disgraceful."

Source: Reprieve, October 31, 2011

Perry Displays Varied Stance Toward Crime

Texas Governor Rick Perry (R)

AUSTIN — By the spring of 2004, when Rick Perry had been governor for over three years, the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole had yet to recommend to him that a single death row inmate be spared.

That May, though, the board’s chairwoman allowed the lawyer for Kelsey Patterson to personally present to her an 11th-hour plea that the inmate’s execution be blocked because of his severe mental illness.

Twelve years earlier, Mr. Patterson had murdered two upstanding residents of Palestine, Tex., for no apparent reason and then fled to a nearby yard where he stripped to his brown socks, gesticulating and hollering until the police arrived.

Juries had previously found Mr. Patterson, who had paranoid schizophrenia, incompetent to stand trial for other senseless assaults. After the double murder, however, he not only was tried but also testified, ranting about electronic implants in proceedings so tumultuous that he was repeatedly ejected from the courtroom or gagged with duct tape.

When the parole board voted unexpectedly to commute Mr. Patterson’s sentence to life in prison, his lawyer, euphoric, was cautioned by a legal counselor to Mr. Perry, “Honey, don’t get your hopes up.” Only the board has the power to recommend clemency, but the governor can deny it.

And indeed, the next day, Mr. Perry rejected the recommendation. Mr. Patterson was executed, and his incoherent final statement ended with the bell-clear “Give me my life back.”

In campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, Mr. Perry has vigorously defended the executions on his watch: 236 over nearly 11 years.

Explaining in 2004 why he was rejecting clemency and upholding the execution of Kelsey Patterson, Mr. Perry said, “No one can guarantee this defendant would not be freed to commit other crimes were his sentence commuted.” Mr. Patterson would have become eligible for parole at 74.

Responding recently to that reasoning, Charles Aycock, a former Texas State Bar president who served on the parole board at the time, said in an interview: “Baloney. We would have never released anybody like that to the street.”

To some here, Mr. Perry’s championing of the death penalty seems crystallized by his 2001 veto of a bill banning the execution of the mentally retarded and by his refusal to stay the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004 after a last-minute report from an arson expert cast doubt on his guilt in his three daughters’ deaths in a house fire.

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Source: The New York Times, October 30, 2011

Saudi Arabia beheads two convicted murderers

October 27, 2011: Saudi Arabia beheaded two men convicted of murder, one who ran over his victims and the other who deliberately hit his victim's car, the interior ministry announced. Mohammed al-Harbi, a Saudi national, was convicted of "intentionally running over" and killing a Saudi couple—Rabih al-Asiri and his wife Nasila Asiri, the Saudi interior ministry said in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

He was beheaded in the kingdom's western province of Qunfudah.

In a separate statement, the ministry said that another man, Abdullah al-Jahdali, was also beheaded in another western province, Al-Laith, after he was found guilty of intentionally hitting Fahd al-Jahdali's car and killing him.

The executions bring to 67 the number of those beheaded this year in the ultra-conservative Muslim kingdom.

Source: Agence France-Presse, October 27, 2011

Willingham inquiry ends, but effects linger

The Willingham house
after the blaze

A state investigation into the science used to convict and execute Cameron Todd Willingham came to a quiet close Friday, but its results might echo across the justice system and the nation's death penalty debate for years to come.

Making final changes to its report on the Willingham case, the Texas Forensic Science Commission signed off on a document acknowledging that unreliable fire science played a role in the Corsicana man's conviction for the murder-by-arson deaths of his three young daughters in 1991. He was executed in 2004.

Following commonly held beliefs now known to be wrong, arson investigators testified that the Willingham house fire was intentionally set using a liquid accelerant, the commission concluded.

Modern fire experts working for the commission and for the New York-based Innocence Project, which is representing Willingham posthumously, have determined that none of the more than 20 "arson indicators" identified by fire investigators in 1991 are reliable evidence of accelerant use. The cause of the fire should have been "undetermined," the experts said.

Though the commission's inquiry was never intended to weigh Willingham's guilt or innocence, the findings have added fuel to the debate over capital punishment.

"The world should now know that the evidence relied upon to convict and execute Cameron Todd Willingham for the fire that killed his daughters was based on scientifically invalid and unreliable evidence," said Stephen Saloom , policy director for the Innocence Project. "By any fair estimate, that indicates he was innocent, that he did not set that fire."

Click here to read the full article

Source: statesman.com, October 28, 2011

Israeli party ponders capital punishment bill to prevent another prisoner swap

The recent prisoner swap that saw Israel release several hundred Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit brought joy to many Israelis, but consternation to many others.

How could prisoners be released who had “blood on their hands” they demanded, referring to the fact that a large proportion of the Palestinians freed were serving life sentences (some of them multiple life sentences) for their role in terror attacks that killed Israeli civilians.

Since the exchange, several efforts have been mounted to try to ensure that such releases never take place again. One effort involves an attempt to draft a set of rules by which any future Israeli government must operate in the event an Israeli citizen is held hostage.

Another effort has been taken by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) to try to ensure that no Israeli soldier is ever taken prisoner. The new directive is to the effect that Israeli soldiers must fire upon any enemy forces attempting to abduct a fellow Israeli soldier, even if such fire jeopardizes the life of the soldier being taken captive.

This week, Shas, one of the parties in the governing coalition announced it would put forward another formula for ensuring no prisoners with blood on their hands are ever released – a bill to be introduced in the Knesset that would impose a death penalty on terrorists who seek to destroy the state of Israel.

Not since 1962, when former Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann was executed for his role in the mass extermination of Jews in Europe, has capital punishment been carried out in Israel. Indeed the action is not one of the legal punishments set out in almost all criminal statutes administered by civil authorities.

Such a bill as Shas has championed has a few problems to overcome, not the least of which is the fact that most Palestinians in Israeli prisons have been convicted by military courts. While Israel’s civil justice system is internationally praised for its independence, impartiality and the quality of the judiciary, the same cannot be said of the country’s military courts (nor almost any country’s military courts).

Capital punishment, still permitted in certain military court cases, has only been carried out once, in 1948, in the early days of the state.

By its very nature, a military court operating in occupied territory and trying civilians from the occupied population is hardly independent or impartial. The officers of the court are also uniformed military officers in an armed force that largely views the prisoners as the enemy.

Until 2004, when legal minimums were introduced, many of those sitting in judgment even in trials of capital offences need not have had legal training.

Not surprisingly perhaps, Israeli studies have shown that in some recent years more than 99 % of the accused have been convicted.

The practice of military courts trying civilians (as opposed to trying its own soldiers accused of breaching military laws) is widely discredited in international legal circles, and neither Israeli society, nor the international community would tolerate a situation where such a court system meted out the death penalty.

This would mean that, if the Shas or a similar bill is passed into law, a large number of the hundreds of serious Palestinian cases would have to be tried in Israeli civilian courts where processes would take far longer than the often brief, summary-style justice of the military courts. It might also result in a far lower rate of conviction.

That alone would probably guarantee that a bill introducing new terms for capital punishment will not be passed.

It is noteworthy that it is Shas that is bringing a capital-punishment proposal forward. Created in the 1980s, Shas is an ultra-Orthodox religious party that represents mostly Sephardi Jews, those descended from Jewish communities of the Middle East and North Africa, as opposed to Northern Europe.

Capital punishment is widely condemned in Jewish religious circles and Shas is breaking from that religious position, not an insignificant matter.

It’s also worth noting what happened in that early Israeli military case of capital punishment.

An Israeli officer named Meir Tobianski was charged with treason for allegedly having passed information to Jordanian forces that allowed their artillery to hit sensitive targets during Israel’s War of Independence. Capt.Tobianski was tried by a makeshift military court in June 1948, found guilty based on evidence provided by the fledgling state’s head of military intelligence, and executed by firing squad.

A year later, an investigation determined that Capt. Tobianski had not been guilty. He was posthumously acquitted of all charges.

Source: The Toronto Globe and Mail, October 28, 2011

Japan Minister Must Not Cave in to Pressure on Death Penalty: AI

The main gallows at
Tokyo's Detention Center

Japan’s justice minister should not sign execution warrants, Amnesty International and the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network said today, following the minister’s announcement that he does not intend to end capital punishment, despite saying last month that he would not approve executions.

Justice Minister Hideo Hiraoka said Friday he would look at each death row case individually, after a prominent politician reportedly had encouraged him to exercise his power to authorize executions.

"After showing reluctance to sign execution warrants last month when he first took office, it is deeply alarming that Minister Hideo Hiraoka now seems to be under pressure to approve executions despite his own calls for caution," said Catherine Baber, Amnesty International’s deputy director for Asia and the Pacific. "The minister must stand by his original commitment which was to suspend executions until Japan’s application of the death penalty can be more carefully considered."

Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura reportedly encouraged Minister Hiraoka at a parliamentary committee on Wednesday to press ahead with executions.

The last executions in Japan were carried out on July 28, 2010, when Ogata Hidenori and Shinozawa Kazuo were hanged in the Tokyo detention center.

A study group on the death penalty was established by the former Minister of Justice Keiko Chiba in 2010. The study group is continuing to work under the current Minister, Hideo Hiraoka, who encouraged discussions on the subject both in public and within his ministry, taking into account international trends and opinions.

No date for its report has been announced.

There are currently 126 people on death row in Japan.

Executions in Japan are by hanging and are typically carried out in secret. Death row inmates are only notified on the morning of their execution and their families are usually informed only after the execution has taken place.

This means that death row prisoners live in constant fear of execution. Enduring these conditions for years or even decades has led to depression and mental illness among many death row inmates.

More than 2/3 of the countries in the world have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. Out of 41 countries in the Asia-Pacific, 17 have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, 9 are abolitionist in practice and one – Fiji – uses the death penalty only for exceptional military crimes.

This means that less than half of the countries in that region still use this ultimate and irreversible punishment. Of the G8 nations, only Japan and the United States still use capital punishment.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty as a violation of the right to life in all cases, regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender, or the method used by the state to carry out the execution.

"Japan should immediately commute all death sentences and introduce an official moratorium on executions as a first step towards abolition of the death penalty," said Baber.

Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 3 million supporters, activists and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom and dignity are denied.

For more information, please visit www.amnestyusa.org

Source: Amnesty International USA, October 28, 2011

Morocco court sentences Marrakesh bomber to death

The mastermind of a deadly bomb attack on a Moroccan cafe in April has been sentenced to death.

The court in Rabat convicted Adel Othmani of organising the attack on the Argana cafe in Marrakesh, which killed 17 people - most of them tourists.

Eight of his associates were given jail sentences for their roles.

Eight French nationals died in the attack, along with two Moroccans and people from Britain, Canada, Portugal, Switzerland and the Netherlands.

It was the deadliest attack in the North African kingdom since bombings in the coastal city of Casablanca in 2003 killed 45 people, including suicide attackers.

Prosecutors told the court that Othmani disguised himself as a guitar-carrying hippie, and planted two bombs in a cafe in Djemaa El-Fna, the tourist heart of Marrakesh.

He then detonated the explosives using a mobile phone.

The motive for the attack was unclear.

The authorities had suggested that Othmani and his accomplices were "admirers of al-Qaeda".

Source: BBC News, October 28, 2011

Marrakesh bomber sentenced to death

A Moroccan judge sentenced Adel Othmani to death on Friday for plotting and carrying out an April 28 bomb attack on a cafe in Marrakesh that killed 17 people, including eight French nationals.

The blasts were the deadliest in Morocco since coordinated suicide bombings carried out by Islamist militants in the commercial capital, Casablanca, in 2003.

After the sentence was read out, female relatives of Othmani and others convicted of being his accomplices began crying and screaming, a Reuters reporter in the court room said.

The prosecution has sought the "harshest possible" sentence against Othmani and eight men accused of being his accomplices. The death penalty is allowed under Morocco's penal code but it has not been carried out since 1992. Othmani had denied the charges, which included making explosives and committing murder. His lawyers said they would lodge an appeal.

Invited earlier on Friday by the three-judge panel to make a final statement before the verdict was given, a bearded Othmani, wearing a grey New York Yankees sweatshirt, said he was the innocent victim of a political plot.

"The whole affair is baseless," he said.

"There is so much injustice in this country ... I'm failing to understand this country. Innocent people find themselves embroiled in cases like this while they are actually being used in political ploys".

The prosecution case was that Othmani, disguising himself as a guitar-carrying hippie, planted two bombs in a cafe in Jamaa el-Fna, Marrakesh's most popular tourist attraction.

The interior ministry said he showed loyalty to al Qaeda but local affiliates of the group have denied involvement.

A man convicted of being his leading accomplice, Hakim Dah, was given life in jail.

Seven others were given sentences ranging from two to four years in prison for offences that included being members of an illegal organisation, helping prepare the bombing and failing to tell police about the bomber's identity.

Attending the trial were mostly French relatives of the victims of the attack. Some carried pictures of their slain relatives while others gathered around a female translator.

Lawyers for the victims' relatives had said they wanted the suspects to be given tough sentences but that they did not want the death penalty.

Source: HindustanTimes, October 28, 2011

UK wants 'reinvigorated' Commonwealth, end to discrimination against gays and scrapping of the death penalty

Britain's Foreign Secretary William Hague on Thursday called for an end to discrimination against gays and the scrapping of the death penalty as he urged the Commonwealth to embrace reform.

Calling on the assembled leaders to heed the "clarion call" for reform, Hague said the 54-member Commonwealth grouping should act as a greater force for democracy and prosperity and speak out on pressing social issues.

"It is the view of the United Kingdom that the next days can and should be defining ones for the Commonwealth," he told a people's forum in Perth, ahead of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting to begin on Friday.

Speaking at a meeting of Commonwealth leaders, he said the group tasked with developing options to reform the bloc - an Eminent Persons Group commissioned in 2009 - had found a need for change.

"And their clarion call for reform is one we should not ignore, whatever the precise details of what we agree to do," he said.

"The case for reinvigorating the Commonwealth is abundantly clear and Britain whole-heartedly supports the recommendations of the Eminent Persons Group.

"In particular, we welcome their focus on promoting the values of the Commonwealth."

Hague said as problems became increasingly global - from financial crisis to climate change - the Commonwealth was the "ultimate network".

Yet while the organisation had taken strong action on human rights in the past, expelling apartheid South Africa from its ranks, it had not reacted as quickly to more recent problems.

Key challenges

"In recent years it has sometimes shied away from key challenges and has not always spoken out as clearly and decisively as it could have done, failing for example to take action on the human rights situations in Zimbabwe or Fiji before they became extreme."

Hague said Britain wanted to see the Commonwealth strengthening its role as "a standard bearer for human rights and democracy".

He said this meant Britain favoured the Eminent Persons Group's recommendation for a charter for the Commonwealth, and supported the push for a Commonwealth commissioner for democracy, rule of law and human rights.

But re-emphasising values should not involve "one group of countries lecturing" others, but learning from each other to raise standards, he said.

"The United Kingdom for instance would like to see the Commonwealth do more to promote the rights of its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender citizens," he said.

"It is wrong, in our view in Britain, that these groups continue to suffer persecution, violence and discrimination within the Commonwealth. And that many members have laws criminalising homosexuality.

"Britain also wants to see the death penalty abolished throughout the Commonwealth."

Old British Empire laws against gays are still in force in 41 of the 54 member nations. These include statutes against homosexual sex.

Source: Agence France-Presse, October 27, 2011

Taiwan pays compensation for wrongful execution

President Ma Ying-jeou has apologised to the family of the executed man

Taiwan's defence ministry says it will pay $4.4m (£2.7m) in compensation to the relatives of an air force private who was wrongly executed in 1997.

Chiang Kuo-ching was found guilty of raping and killing a 5-year-old girl, but in September this year a military court overturned the conviction posthumously.

The court said Mr Chiang was innocent and had been tortured into confessing.

The case has reignited debate in Taiwan about the death penalty.

Mr Chiang was working at a military base in 1996 when the girl, whose mother also worked there, was found dead.

After he was executed, his parents spent years campaigning to clear his name.

'Lessons learned'

The case was reopened earlier this year and investigators found no evidence that Mr Chiang had been at the scene of the crime.

Another man with a history of sexual abuse has since been arrested.

A lawyer for Mr Chiang's mother said the family accepted the compensation offered.

Taiwan's President, Ma Ying-jeou, has apologised to the family.

The island's defence ministry says it has learned lessons and will not allow such miscarriages of justice to happen again.

However, campaigners against the death penalty say Taiwan's justice system cannot guarantee that mistakes will not be made in future.

In 2003, three men sentenced to death were acquitted on appeal after a court said there was no evidence linking them to the crime.

They were also found to have been tortured into confessing.

Taiwan's Supreme Court this year asked for a retrial.

No executions were carried out in Taiwan between 2006 and 2009 due to a moratorium, but the government revived the death penalty last year under pressure from the families of murder victims.

Since then, 9 death row inmates have been executed.

Source: Taiwan News, October 27, 2011

Death penalty policy remains unchanged: justice minister

Minister of Justice Tseng Yung-fu reaffirmed Thursday that there has been no change in the government's policy of minimizing rather than abolishing capital punishment. "Our policy remains unchanged -- the death penalty will be used as little as possible, but will not be scrapped for the time being," Tseng said during a Legislative Yuan session. While death-row inmates will definitely be executed once all legal proceedings are completed, prosecutors have been asked to minimize recommendations of capital punishment, he said. Tseng's statements came after the United Daily News (UDN) said in a front-page story the same day that Taiwan had reversed its policy on capital punishment.

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) has suggested in its first-ever human rights report that prosecutors refrain from recommending the death sentence for defendants or criminal suspects, the paper said. "The suggestion aims to minimize and even avoid death sentencing," an MOJ official was quoted as saying. The newspaper cited the example of a case in Nantou County in which prosecutors recommended Wednesday either the death penalty or life imprisonment for a man charged with the death of four people. The man allegedly poisoned the four victims with a toxic industrial solvent in July. Usually, prosecutors would seek only the death penalty in such a case, the paper said. Commenting on the newspaper report, Tseng said that even though prosecutors have been asked to recommend penalties other than capital punishment, the ministry has consistently respected prosecutors' decisions. Asked whether the 51 convicts on death row will be executed, Tseng said the government's stance remaines unchanged because majority public opinion is still in favor of the death penalty, as various polls have shown. The death row prisoners "will be executed once all the relevant screening procedures are finalized," Tseng said. The execution of five death row inmates in March sparked strong protests at home and abroad. Citing MOJ officials, the UDN report said it remains unclear when next death-row executions would take place.

"There is no timetable for the executions," an official said. Although the death penalty remains valid under the current law, the official said, the MOJ has been working to gradually limit the use of capital punishment, through measures such as scrapping the regulations that list the death sentence as the only option for certain types of crime. The Judicial Yuan is also planning law revisions that, if passed, will require the Supreme Court to conduct an open debate on any death penalty case, the report said. In its human rights report that will be published early next year, the MOJ will outline steps to reduce the use of capital punishment, the paper said. The newspaper also said the MOJ will invite foreign legal scholars and internationally renowned human rights experts to help scrutinize its human rights reports and refer those reports to Taiwan-friendly countries and relevant United Nations agencies in the hope of upgrading Taiwan's human rights record. According to the MOJ human rights report, there are still nine acts that stipulate the death penalty for 57 types of crime. Over the past decade, the average time for a case to close with a death penalty verdict has been 5.8 years, with some stretching to 20 years, the UDN report said.

Source: Taiwan News, October 27, 2011

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Verdict in Morocco blasts case expected Friday

The trial of 9 people accused over an April bomb attack that killed 17 in Marrakesh neared closure Thursday as a lawyer for the alleged mastermind insisted his client was innocent.

Prosecutors say Adil al-Atmani and eight accomplices orchestrated the April 28 blast at a cafe packed with European tourists, but defence lawyer Hassan Mouhib told the court in Sale, near the capital Rabat, that the government had not proved its case.

A final hearing is set for Friday with a verdict expected later in the day against the suspects who all deny guilt in the case.

Mouhib asked the tribunal to be "fair" in judging his client Atmani, who initially admitted to his role in the bombing but later retracted his confession, claiming he had been set up.

Prosecutors last week said Atmani and co-accused Hakim al Dah should be sentenced to death.

But lawyers representing the victims' families previously asked the court to sentence the accused to life in prison and not death, partly to deprive them of boasting that they will die as martyrs.

Mouhib invoked Morocco's new constitution, which was massively backed in a July referendum, which guarantees the "right to life."

Morocco has not enforced its death penalty provision since 1992.

Atmani has said he made trips to Libya, Mauritania, Mali and Algeria, which prosecutors have pointed to as proof of his links to global jihadist organisations, including Al-Qaeda.

But his lawyer dismissed those arguments, saying his client had travelled in pursuit of trade opportunities.

According to co-defendant Mohamed Njim, Atmani previously expressed a desire to practice jihad (holy war) in Chechnya.

Moroccan authorities had initially blamed Al-Qaeda's north African branch for the bombing but AQIM, seen behind a series of attacks and kidnappings in north Africa, denies responsibility.

Source: Yahoo.com, October 27, 2011

Officials ask Perry to allow DNA tests for death row inmate

Hank Skinner

With convicted killer Henry Skinner's execution less than two weeks away, a group of legislators and former prosecutors and judges on Thursday called on Gov. Rick Perry for prompt DNA testing of items that could help clear the one-time paralegal of the triple murder that sent him to death row.

Skinner, 49, consistently has contended he was too impaired by alcohol and codeine to have fatally bludgeoned his girlfriend and fatally stabbed her two adult sons in a 1993 New Year's Eve rampage at the couple's Pampa home.

Execution set Nov. 9

Skinner, who came within an hour of execution in March 2010, before the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay, has petitions to obtain the DNA testing before state and federal courts. He is scheduled to be executed on Nov. 9.

In the letter to Perry, Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and Gray County District Attorney Lynn Switzer, the current and former officials expressed "grave and growing concerns about the state's stubborn refusal to date to test all the evidence in the Skinner case."

Among untested items are the female victim's fingernail clippings, swabs from a rape kit, two knives, a blood-stained windbreaker and a bloody towel found at the crime scene.

The letter says there is "simply no justifiable reason" for the state to resist granting DNA testing.

No state response

"We believe that the death penalty is an appropriate punishment for certain crimes and we understand that the DNA testing might well show that Mr. Skinner is deserving of that punishment," the authors write. "But we are also steadfast in our belief that when it comes to the ultimate penalty, we must do everything in our power to ensure certainty before taking the irreversible step of carrying out an execution. ... We implore you to take the lead in the search for the truth in this case."

Among those signing the letter were former Gov. Mark White; state Sens. Rodney Ellis and Juan Hinojosa, Democrats from Houston and McAllen, respectively; state Reps. Pete Gallego and Eddie Rodriguez, Democrats from Alpine and Austin; former Harris County assistant district attorneys Wendell Odom Jr., Earl Musick and Joanne Musick; and former Harris County state District Judge Norman Lanford.

Perry spokeswoman Lucy Nashed referred requests for comment to Abbott and Switzer, saying the governor would not comment on a case in the courts. Abbott's office did not respond to inquiries.

Source: chron.com, October 27, 2011

Please sign and share widely this online petition to Lynn Switzer, Gray County District Attorney, to urge her to grant Hank Skinner the DNA testing. 

Rival hits Perry on death penalty

Former New Mexico governor and current Republican presidential hopeful Gary E. Johnson said he saw the dangers of the death penalty up close during his 2 terms in office - and says he is convinced Texas has executed innocent people.

In a wide-ranging interview with editors and reporters at The Washington Times this week, Mr. Johnson, who is mounting a long-shot bid for GOP nomination, said his current opposition to the death penalty stems from having once pushed a bill to curtail appeals that he modeled on Texas law, but which, he now says, would have led in at least one case to the execution of innocent persons in a gang-murder case.

“If my legislation would have passed, they would have been put to death, and they would have been innocent. And I believe Texas has done the same,” he said, pointing to the neighboring state run by Gov. Rick Perry, who is also running for the presidential nomination.

He said he does not know for certain Texas has executed innocent people, but is convinced it has happened “just because of how many people have been put to death.”

Mr. Perry’s campaign referred calls to his official governor’s office, which said he is confident in the systems and safeguards the state has in place.

“Like the vast majority of Texans, Gov. Perry supports the death penalty as a fitting and constitutional punishment for the most heinous crimes,” said spokeswoman Lucy Nashed. “We are confident that Texas’ criminal justice system has the appropriate due process, thorough appeals and necessary protections to ensure that only those who are guilty receive the ultimate punishment.”

During one GOP presidential debate, the audience applauded Mr. Perry’s record of overseeing executions - something Mr. Johnson told The Times caused him to recoil.

“I’m thinking, ‘Oh, gosh, I bet there were a few of them that were innocent,’ ” he said.

Mr. Johnson, a 58-year-old former businessman who calls himself the “No. 9 candidate” in what most press accounts portray as an eight-candidate field, is fighting to win a regular place on the debate stages and higher visibility in opinion polls.

Source: The Washington Post, October 27, 2011

Texas executes Frank Garcia

Frank Garcia

HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Former San Antonio street gang member Frank Garcia was executed Thursday evening for fatally shooting a veteran police officer who was trying to resolve a domestic dispute that also left Garcia’s wife dead.

The 39-year-old Garcia shouted “Thank you Yahweh” over and over until he lost consciousness. He was pronounced dead at 7:02 p.m. Thursday.

The lethal injection, the 12th this year in the nation’s most active death penalty state of Texas, came some 30 minutes after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down Garcia’s appeals. His attorneys argued Garcia was mentally impaired and ineligible for the death penalty. They also argued lawyers earlier in the appeals process and at his trial in 2002 were ineffective in failing to properly address those mental impairment issues.

He was condemned for the slaying of Hector Garza, 48, a father of five who had served 25 years on the San Antonio police force when he was killed March 29, 2001.

Garza was shot while responding, for a second time that day, to a call about a man trying to keep a woman from leaving the south San Antonio home with two children. He went inside and found Garcia with his wife, Jessica.

Garcia told detectives following his arrest that he shot Garza in the head because he knew officers wore protective vests.

“When I shot I aimed for his head and that’s where I hit him,” he said. “I don’t know how many times I shot my gun. I just turned real fast. I saw the officer go down. The officer never had his gun out that I noticed.”

Garcia said he then “went crazy,” turned toward his wife and shot her.

He went outside and started shooting more, hitting parked cars and a school across the street. He also wounded his wife’s uncle, who had come to help his niece leave the house with her children. The children were not hurt.

He eventually surrendered to other police arriving at the scene.

Garcia becomes the 12th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Texas, and the 476th overall since the state resumed capital punishment on December 17, 1982. Garcia becomes the 237th condemned inmate to be put to death in Texas since Rick Perry became governor in 2001.

Garcia becomes the 39th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1273rd overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Source: AP, Rick Halperin, October 27, 2011

Why Innocence Didn't Matter for Troy Davis

ATLANTA, Georgia, Oct 26, 2011 (IPS) - "Innocence matters" is one of the slogans used by activists opposing the U.S. state of Georgia's execution of Troy Davis, up until the day the sentence was carried out by lethal injection on Sep. 21.

It seems like stating the obvious that innocence matters in the criminal justice system, especially when someone's life is on the line in a death penalty case. At least, innocence should always matter. But does it in practice?

Davis was convicted of killing police officer Mark MacPhail in 1989. Yet following his conviction, seven of nine witnesses against him recanted their testimony, two witnesses implicated another person as the killer, and two of the original jurors who found Davis guilty came forward to oppose the execution.

No forensic evidence presented at trial indicated that Davis was the shooter.

Martina Correia, Davis's sister, explained the significance of the phrase in a 2008 video interview with Black Agenda Report.

"The court system is telling us that recanted testimony is not as important as trial testimony. And what's happening is my brother, Troy, is being denied access to the courts because they're saying that innocence - if you got a fair trial in the beginning - it doesn't matter whether or not you're innocent or guilty, they don't have to hear new evidence.

As it turns out, there are a number of procedural obstacles which essentially prevented Davis's possible innocence from mattering when it came to saving his life.

Many of these obstacles are the direct result of legislation passed by the U.S. Congress in 1996 called the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA).

Click here to read the full article

Source: IPS, October 26, 2011

California: Death penalty foes launch initiative drive

Lethal Injection Facility (exterior)
at San Quentin's prison

Capital punishment opponents launched a drive Tuesday to place an initiative on the November 2012 ballot to replace the death penalty in California with a sentence of life in prison without possibility of parole.

Organizers must collect 504,000 valid voter signatures by the March 18 deadline to qualify the initiative for the election. They've dubbed their measure the Savings, Accountability and Full Enforcement for California Act.

"Californians are ready for the SAFE California Act because now they realize we have wasted literally billions of dollars on a failed death penalty system," said Natasha Minsker, statewide campaign manager for the effort. "It's time to take our resources and put them instead toward public safety."

Minsker, an attorney in the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California who has long specialized in opposing executions, said the campaign has 800 volunteers and expects to have 2,000 by March. She estimated the campaign to qualify for the ballot will cost as much as $1.5 million, "and we have some great donors."

The drive was announced at a news conference on the steps of San Francisco City Hall.

California has not executed anyone since January 2006, shortly before a federal judge halted enforcement of the death penalty because of the possibility that flawed procedures were inflicting agonizing deaths on condemned prisoners. The state is still trying to satisfy the court's concerns.

A Field Poll released last month showed that 68 percent of California voters surveyed favored keeping the death penalty. But for the 1st time since the poll began asking the question 11 years ago, more voters - 48 % - said they would prefer that someone convicted of 1st-degree murder serve life without the possibility of parole. 40 % preferred the death penalty.

Proponents who spoke at Tuesday's event included 2 women who lost relatives to homicide. Others supporting the measure include retired or active law enforcement officials, including San Francisco Sheriff Michael Hennessey.

They pointed to a study by a federal judge and a law professor, released in June, showing California has spent $4 billion on the death penalty since the Legislature restored it in 1977. That works out to $308 million for each of the 13 executions carried out since then.

Abolishing the death penalty, they said, would save the state $1 billion in 5 years.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle, October 26, 2011

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U.S.: Let Them Eat Nothing – No Lunch for Prisoners

A growing number of U.S. prisons are taking steps to shatter any illusion that the role of prisons is to rehabilitate rather than merely punish. Eliminating lunch on weekends is gaining ground. The New York Times recently reported that Texas prisons scrapped mid-day meals on Saturday and Sunday last April. Still available are “brunch” from 5 to 7 a.m. and dinner between 4 and 6:30 p.m. Then last month they chopped last meals for inmates scheduled for execution.

Texas is not alone in skirting American Correctional Association standards by reducing the number of meals served. Ohio, Arizona, Georgia and Indiana all operate their food services on reduced schedules. Georgia inmates go three days without lunch, Friday through Sunday.

Slashing food budgets may create other financial headaches. On October 11th, inmates in a privately operated Oklahoma prison rioted over the poor quality of food. Kentucky prisoners rioted in 2009 when they were served soup filled with worms and burritos containing human feces. That same year, inmates in a privately-run prison in Texas set fire to the facility to protest inadequate food and health care.

More Than Money at Stake

The practice of cutting meals or serving mediocre food seems like a simple budgetary issue, but the implications may be far reaching. A study of the impact of mild hunger on the decisions made by 8 Israeli judges showed they made harsher parole decisions before meal breaks. After analyzing more than 1,000 decisions made by eight experienced judges over a period of 50 days, the researchers found, “The proportion of favorable rulings fell from about 65 % to nearly zero during each session separated by the 2 food breaks, leaping back to 65 % immediately after the breaks. If judges are influenced by mild hunger, prisoners surely are too.

A study currently underway in the U.K. is testing the link between poor diet and violence in prison populations. It is based on the findings of 2002 study showing that prisoners receiving nutritional supplements committed fewer violent offenses. The lead researcher, Bernard Gesch, says the link between behavior and diet is not new. Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso saw a connection between terrorism and poor diet in 1892. Many other studies showing links between diet and behavior are analyzed in a report called, “Changing Diets, Changing Minds: how food affects mental health and behaviour.”

The Impact Is Still Unknown

The impact of reducing the number of meals served to inmates has not yet been the subject of a study. So far the prisons reducing the number of meals are not reporting increases in behavioral problems. In an era of tight budgets, more prisons are likely to join the experiment.

Inmates who protest will not find much sympathy from Texas State Senator John Whitmore. The Democratic chair of the Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee responded bluntly to questions about the cuts: “If they don’t like the menu, don’t come there in the first place.”

Source: care2.com, October 26, 2011

Iran: Man hanged in public in Gharchak (west of Tehran)

Source: Iran Human Rights

1 man was hanged publicly in the town of Gharchak (Qarchak; Tehran province) early this morning.

According to the state run Iranian news agency Fars, a 29 years old man identified as Bakhshali Asgari was hanged convicted of murdering a 9 year-old girl and her grandmother, sexual abuse of the girl and stealing the woman’s jewelry in 2009.

The man was hanged publicly at 06:16 AM in front of tens of people. He had also been sentenced to 74 lashes and the sentenced was implemented in the prison yesterday.

Based on the reports from the official Iranian sources, so far 35 people have been executed, seven of them publicly, in the month of October 2011

Source: Iran Human Rights, October 27, 2011 - [فارسى]


THIS MUST STOP!!!

Photos: Iran-Resist

Bakhash-Ali Askari Hanged While Children Watched

HRANA News Agency – This morning, Wednesday, October 26, 2011, Bakhash-Ali Askari was hanged in public in Qarchak, Tehran Province, while the young and the old watched.Bakhash-Ali Askari was convicted of murder and rape.

Released pictures by the state media clearly depict that the authorities enforce no age limits on the audience watching another human being hanged.

According to a report by Fars News Agency, after the court order was read, Bakhash-Ali Askari was hanged early this morning in Qarchak. He was convicted of two counts of murder and one count of rape and sentenced to death for each charge. The Supreme Court reviewed and upheld these sentences in less than a month.

The pictures of this public hanging have been released here.

Source: Freedom Messenger, October 27, 2011

Related article:

"Children watching public executions in Iran: Iran Human Rights urges the international community to act immediately", Iran Human Rights, October 13, 2011

A Buddhist perspective on the death penalty

Buddhists, along with a growing number of members of other religions, believe that the death penalty is fundamentally unethical. From the Buddhist perspective, non-violence, or not harming others, is the heart of the Buddha’s teachings.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama signed Amnesty International’s pledge against the death penalty several years ago, and has spoken out against it on multiple occasions. He opposes the death penalty because it punishes the person and not the action.

Buddhism does allow ending the life of another when it is done in self-defense, and the argument could be made that, sometimes, capital punishment could be viewed as a society’s attempt at self-defense. But when there are other means available to prevent a person from harming others, such as imprisonment, it would seem that the less lethal option should be favored.

Countering violence with violence only results in more violence. The true enemy is our own self-cherishing and self-grasping tendencies, and the negative behavior that we engage in to defend, protect, and sustain ourselves even at others’ expense.

Click here to read the full article

Source: The Washington Post, Losang Tendrol, October 26, 2011. Losang Tendrol is a nun in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. She teaches meditation and Buddhism at the Guhyasamaja Buddhist Center in Reston.

 

Saudi Arabia: Emirati pays over $4M to spare killer's life

October 26, 2011: in Saudi Arabia, an unknown UAE donor gave more than $4 million (Dh14.69m) to save a teenage Saudi killer from the gallows and allow the boy to return to his family after awaiting execution in prison for many years, a Saudi newspaper said.

The family of Faisal Al Ruwaili in the northwestern town of Jouf has managed to raise around SR2 million ($540,000) while it has also received some funds into a special bank account set up for donations, 'Sharq' Arabic language daily said.

The victim’s family had demanded diya (blood money) SR20m, prompting the defendant’s family to appeal for help.

“A UAE benevolent person donated more than SR16m to close the account, which now has SR20m, the diya demanded by the victim’s relatives…this person refused to disclose his or her name and sources said they believe she is a woman,” the paper said.

“Sharq is pleased to convey the good news to Failal’s family and wishes that God the Almighty preserve and protect this person who ever he is.”

Faisal was to be executed on 25 October but the victim’s relatives agreed to give his family seven more months to pay the diya following mediation by Prince Khaled Al Faisal, a member of the ruling family.

Ruwaili has been in prison in the Western town of Makkah for several years for murdering a school colleague during a fight.

'Sharq' did not mention his age now but said he is the only supporter of his family, which comprises four sisters and his parents.

Source: Emirates247.com, October 26, 2011

California: The Next Death Penalty Battleground

San Quentin's brand new
execution chamber

Georgia's decision to go forward with the execution of Troy Davis in the face of an international outcry calling for time, clarity and justice has, once again, galvanized anti-death penalty consciousness here at home. What passes for fairness in parts of this country, and make no mistake, we're talking about "parts of this country," is the issue. 16 states in the U.S. have no death penalty, 4 of them having done away with it since 2007. Of the remaining 34, some use it so rarely their citizens forget it's actually on the books. A quick glance tells us the most active killing states comprise the "Old South," and a look at the racial makeup of death row today suggests to many that it is a relic of slavery. But a closer look tells us even more.

One of the reasons the death penalty was outlawed by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1972 was the arbitrariness of its application. 2 identical crimes committed in the same state often resulted in different penalties: one death, the other life. That was supposedly fixed by the Court's Gregg decision reinstating capital punishment in 1976, which ordered "safeguards" to protect against that flaw and others. However, a recent study by the Death Penalty Information Center shows that 32% of the executions in the U.S. since 1976 came from prosecutions in only 15 counties, a number amounting to less than 1% of the total number of counties in killing states. Of those 402 executions, all but 20 (10 each in Arizona and Ohio) came from Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri and Alabama.

Clearly, one cannot rule out that racism and arbitrariness abound today. Justice Potter Stewart's determination that death sentences are "cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual" is no less true today than it was when he wrote this. Beyond reasserting his innocence and offering God's blessings on the soul of the guards poised to take his life, Troy Davis said of the struggle to end this barbarism, "I ask my family and friends to continue to fight this fight."

We believe this fight must be won. And as the effort goes forward in courts, on the streets and in legislatures across the U.S., our sense is that the politics and culture of California make it an excellent battleground for the next death penalty fight. California has a peculiar relationship with the death penalty. On one hand, California rarely executes people -- 13 killings in 33 years, the last of which was in 2006. In that same period, three times as many death row inmates have committed suicide or died of natural causes. On the other hand, California's courts sentence people to death faster than any other state, creating the country's largest death row by far, with 715 condemned men and women. More than 20% of death row inmates in the U.S. live at San Quentin. Two years ago, Los Angeles County alone sentenced more to death than the entire state of Texas. Long seen as a "liberal" state, California's embrace of capital punishment is odd. In part, the dichotomy reflects the state's politically diverse population, which spans the ideological, ethnic, cultural, and economic spectra. With vast areas of both urban and rural populations and strong, conflicting pockets of conservative and liberal voting blocs, it is actually more a plaid than a red or blue state.

However, this very diversity is the reason California, a bellwether, can lead the way in ending state killing in the U.S. Unlike most states, California cannot end its death penalty in the legislature; it must be done at the ballot box. The voters themselves -- in all their many creeds and colors -- must make that choice. And they are ready to do so. New polls tell us that 54% of Californians prefer life without parole to death. That support is even higher among California's new majority, comprised of Latino, African American and Asian voters. Californians are becoming increasingly aware that the death penalty costs hundreds of millions of dollars more every year than life in prison without parole. And, in what is one of the most significant developments regarding this issue in decades, opposition to the death penalty is now much less a partisan issue. Today, conservatives recognize it as an inefficient government system with costs that are out of control.

Work has already begun to give California voters a chance to replace the death penalty at the polls in November 2012. The SAFE California Act will replace capital punishment with life in prison without parole, require convicted murderers to work and pay restitution to a victims' compensation fund, and direct some of the money saved to solving more rapes and murders. It will bring the sharpest decline in U.S. death sentences, the largest reduction in the national death row population, and it will make a statement by the largest number of voters that public safety will be best served by ending the death penalty.

Troy Davis wasn't the first arguably innocent person executed in the United States, and he isn't the only potentially innocent person to sit on death row. Perhaps he understood, better than anyone, that Georgia's decision to take his life could pave the way to end executions across the United States. The price paid in such cases is a steep one. It now falls on us to see this hope become reality.

To help Californians do their part, please support, volunteer, and donate to the SAFE California Campaign.

Source: Alec Baldwin and Mike Farrell, Huffington Post, October 25, 2011