FEATURED POST

Unveiling Singapore’s Death Penalty Discourse: A Critical Analysis of Public Opinion and Deterrent Claims

Image
While Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) maintains a firm stance on the effectiveness of the death penalty in managing drug trafficking in Singapore, the article presents evidence suggesting that the methodologies and interpretations of these studies might not be as substantial as portrayed.

Pending challenges of Nebraska's death penalty system could affect state's latest execution efforts

Nebraska
A legal issue looms over Nebraska's death penalty that's unrelated to the new and untried lethal drug combination state officials unveiled this week.

Defense attorneys say pending challenges of a system that allows judges rather than juries to impose death sentences could impact whether the state ends its streak of 20 years without an execution.

At least 3 of the 11 men on death row have challenged the state's procedure, which gives 3-judge panels the final say in capital cases. They argue that the U.S. Constitution requires the same jury that decides a defendant's guilt to also decide his fate.

Their argument has so far proved unsuccessful. A district court judge recently issued an opinion that utterly rejected any argument of constitutional flaws in Nebraska's system. Attorneys for the inmates will now hope for favorable rulings in state and federal appellate courts.

Nebraska prison officials announced Thursday they have obtained supplies of 4 drugs they say will allow them to carry out a lethal injection execution. Attorney General Doug Peterson said that after a 60-day notice period, he intends to seek a death warrant for Jose Sandoval, who led 3 gunmen who stormed a Norfolk bank in 2002 and shot down 4 bank employees and a customer.

While attention immediately focused on the drugs, which have never been used in combination by another death penalty state, questions about Nebraska's capital sentencing procedure remain unsettled.

The 3 death-row inmates who have challenged Nebraska's system are John Lotter, Marco Torres and Jeffrey Hessler.

They rely on a 2016 case called Hurst v. Florida, in which the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a capital sentencing scheme that allowed judges to impose death sentences. The ruling in the Florida case prompted the Delaware Supreme Court to end the death penalty there because it relied on a similar system.

Although Sandoval has not yet raised a similar challenge, the issue could potentially affect the state's efforts to execute him, said Rebecca Woodman, a defense lawyer in Lenexa, Kansas, who represents Lotter.

"Those cases could have an impact on Sandoval's case for sure," she said.

But a Nebraska judge recently delivered a blow to Lotter's effort to overturn the death penalty based on the Hurst decision. Saline County District Judge Vicky Johnson, who presided over Lotter's motion in Richardson County, said Nebraska's system is substantially different from the one struck down by the Supreme Court.

In Florida, juries provided judges with advisory opinions about sentencing. The key factual determinations regarding punishment were left with the judge.

In Nebraska, juries must decide - during a 2nd penalty phase held right after the trial - whether aggravating factors against a convicted defendant exist. If juries find, beyond a reasonable doubt, that aggravating factors do exist, a 3-judge panel considers any mitigating factors in favor of the defendant

If the aggravating factors outweigh mitigating factors, the judicial panel may then impose a death sentence.

"This makes Nebraska's sentencing process completely dissimilar from the sentencing scheme utilized in Hurst," Johnson wrote in an order issued in late September.

The judge went even further in support of Nebraska's system. She said the Hurst decision may apply to death penalty cases still under direct appeal but not retroactively to convictions like Lotter's and Sandoval's, which were long ago affirmed by the Nebraska Supreme Court.

Lotter also failed in an earlier attempt to raise the issue before a federal district court judge.

Woodman declined to comment about the most recent ruling against her client. But Lotter has appealed to the Nebraska Supreme Court, which recently agreed to hear the case.

Lotter, 46, has spent 22 years on death row for the 1993 triple homicide at a farmhouse near Humboldt, Nebraska. The case inspired the award-winning movie "Boys Don't Cry."

Torres, 42, was sent to death row for the 2007 execution-style shootings of 2 Grand Island men. His challenge of Nebraska's system is part of a habeas corpus motion filed last summer in U.S. District Court in Omaha.

Hessler, 39, was sentenced to die for the rape and murder of a 15-year-old Gering girl in 2003. A check of court records showed no recent activity on his motion challenging the state's sentencing scheme.

Source: Omaha World-Herald, November 11, 2017



Lawsuits expected over possible Sandoval execution


Jose Sandoval
Death penalty experts say the new four-drug combination Nebraska officials unveiled Thursday has never been used by another state in a lethal injection execution.

That means legal challenges over the drugs could further delay what would be the 1st time Nebraska has used lethal injection to carry out an execution.

"It's yet another experimental protocol. Now the lawsuits begin," said Robert Dunham, director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services announced Thursday that it has notified Jose Sandoval - 1 of 3 men convicted of murder in the 2002 U.S. Bank shootings in Norfolk - that it will inject 4 drugs in the following order: diazepam, fentanyl citrate, cisatracurium besylate and potassium chloride.

Diazepam (brand names include Valium) is a benzodiazepine that is used to produce a calming effect. Fentanyl citrate is a general anesthetic that has been used since the 1960s. As an opioid, it also blocks pain, which has made it a popular a street drug linked to lethal overdoses.

Cisatracurium besylate (brand name: Nimbex) relaxes or paralyzes muscles and is used along with a general anesthetic when intubating patients or doing surgery.

The final drug, potassium chloride, is used to stop the inmate's heart. It was the only drug that was also used in Nebraska's former 3-drug combination.

Dunham said the 4 drugs selected by Nebraska have not been used in combination by another death penalty state. The 3rd drug, cisatracurium besylate, has not been used before in an execution, he added.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Sacramento, Calif., said that in 2015 the U.S. Supreme Court established "a fairly high hurdle for those who would stop a lethal injection."

Death row lab
In deciding a lethal injection dispute in Oklahoma, the court said that to prevent an execution, the drug must present a "demonstrated risk of causing severe pain" in the inmate and the risk must be substantial compared with known alternative drugs, Scheidegger said.

"The objection that a drug has never been used before is not valid by itself," he said.

State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, the leading opponent of capital punishment in the state, said the new and untested protocol would inspire lengthy legal action.

"They're far from being at the point at which an execution can be carried out," Chambers said. "I think the rough ride has just begun."

The senator said he thought that Thursday's announcement was more a "political and public relations" move tied to Gov. Pete Ricketts' bid to win a 2nd term as governor.

The Republican governor helped organize and fund a petition drive to reinstate capital punishment last year after the Legislature in 2015 overrode his veto to repeal the death penalty.

Danielle Conrad, director of the ACLU of Nebraska, said she was "horrified" that the state plans to use Sandoval as a test subject for an unproven lethal drug combination. Her organization, she said, will closely evaluate the constitutional questions raised by the state's plan.

"This rash decision will not fix the problems with Nebraska's broken death penalty and are a distraction from the real issues impacting Nebraska's Department of Corrections: an overcrowded, crisis-riddled system," she said in a press release.

Source: Norfolk Daily News, November 11, 2017


⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.


Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!



"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

Most Viewed (Last 7 Days)

California | San Quentin begins prison reform - but not for those on death row

Oklahoma | Death row inmate Michael DeWayne Smith denied stay of execution

Indonesia | Bali Prosecutors Seeking Death on Appeal

Ohio dad could still face death penalty in massacre of 3 sons after judge tosses confession

Iran | Couple hanged in the Central Prison of Tabriz

Pakistan | Christian brothers acquitted of blasphemy; three accusers charged