Death Penalty News

THE death penalty has no place in modern society. It is the most abhorrent act available to man - the deliberate taking of a human life in the name of justice. The absolute truth of these statements came to me on February 3, 1967, the day that Ronald Ryan was executed at Pentridge Prison - the last man to be hanged in Australia. I was a witness to the execution. Together with 11 other journalists, I watched as Ryan was led to the gallows in the centre of a catwalk spanning the first level of the D Division cell block. I watched as the hangman looped the noose around his neck. I watched as the hood was pulled down over his face. As the hangman leapt for the lever and the gallows crashed open, sending Ryan to his death at the end of the rope, I closed my eyes - it was too much to bear. It was the most deliberate, callous and barbaric act I have ever witnessed. The memory haunts me to this day - that I saw a man deliberately killed in the name of the law. I walked into Pen...

Survivor of Ohio's latest botched execution reveals breathtaking incompetence Romell Broom achieved a macabre notoriety this past month when he became the first man to survive his date with the needle. Not just in Ohio, but anywhere. The convicted rapist and murderer endured more than two hours of poking and stabbing before his date with death was called off indefinitely. His executioners could not find a vein to plant intravenous shunts, and they prodded him with needles at least 18 times to no avail, says Tim Sweeney, his lawyer. The eyes of the world are on Ohio now, and many are questioning our death-penalty apparatus. It was the first time an execution was called off while in progress, but it wasn't the first time our executioners unintentionally prolonged their work. In 2006, inmate Joseph Clark uttered "It don't work" as his handlers bungled an IV attachment and delayed his doom for more than an hour. In 2007, techs took close to two hours to find a vei...

A Texas death row inmate won a reprieve Tuesday from a federal appeals court a day before he was scheduled for execution for a triple slaying in Amarillo almost 12 years ago. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a brief one-paragraph order stopping the lethal injection of John Balentine, set for Wednesday evening, "pending further order of this court." Balentine's appeal to the New Orleans-based 5th Circuit said lower courts had not properly resolved his earlier appeals. The Texas Attorney General's Office was appealing to get the order lifted, spokeswoman Lauri Saathoff said. Balentine, 40, would have been the 19th prisoner executed this year in the nations most active death penalty state. Balentine was condemned for the January 1998 shooting deaths of Mark Caylor Jr., 17; Kai Brooke Geyer, 15; and Steven Watson, also 15. Caylor was the brother of Balentine's former girlfriend, and prosecutors said the shootings capped a feud between Caylor and Balentine....

Nebraska corrections officials propose to execute condemned prisoners with a 3-drug combination. The drugs would be the same used in all other states that carry out the death penalty by lethal injection an anesthetic, a paralyzing agent and a drug to stop the prisoner's heart. Death penalty critics attack the drugs, saying they can cause prisoners to suffer and that veterinarians have rejected using them to euthanize animals. But the three-drug protocol is outlined in draft rules and regulations for Nebraska executions officials released Monday. The proposed rules would carry out the state's new lethal injection law. A public hearing is set for Nov. 16 at the State Office Building in Lincoln. Robert Houston, director of corrections, said staffers who developed the draft protocol did not consider other drugs. "Those are the most accepted," he said. "We believe that that protocol follows state law and reflects the best procedures from around the country." But ...

A death row inmate has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to delay his upcoming execution in light of problems with the state's last scheduled lethal injection. Attorneys for Lawrence Reynolds filed a motion with the state's highest court today, days after a similar filing with a federal appeals court. Reynolds execution scheduled for Oct. 8 would be the 1st since the state's unsuccessful attempt at putting Romell Broom to death on Sept. 15. The lethal injection procedure was halted by Gov. Ted Strickland after executioners struggled for 2 hours to find a usable vein. Broom's execution has been delayed until at least Nov. 30. Reynolds' lawyers argue that Ohios lethal injection system should be investigated before he goes to the death chamber. Source: Cleveland.com, Sept. 30, 2009

Five people were hanged in the prison of Taybad, north-east of Iran reported the official news site of the Iranian police. Those executed were convicted of drug trafficking and none of them were identified by name. No further details were given in the report. The executions took place at about 9 pm, September 28, according to the report. Source: Iran Human Rights, Sept. 30, 2009

The ghosts of problem executions past combined with an aborted attempt two weeks ago are haunting state prison officials as death-penalty foes argue that Ohio's lethal injections should be halted, at least temporarily. The Ohio public defender, in motions filed yesterday in state and federal courts, contends that the botched attempt to execute Romell Broom on Sept. 15 - coupled with problems in two previous executions - warrants postponing the scheduled lethal injection of Lawrence Reynolds next week. "Until a thorough and proper review of Ohio's lethal injection protocol is conducted, executions should not be allowed to proceed in the state," Kelly L. Schneider, head of the public defender's death-penalty section, told The Dispatch yesterday. "It seems like the logical thing to do is to take a step back and see what's going on here." The prison execution team "demonstrated that it is wholly incapable of administering Ohio's lethal inj...

A lot of people opposed to the death penalty have stories of conversion, but none could possibly be more powerful than those who have been victimized by the crimes eligible for such a punishment. The family members of murder victims are often assumed to be of one mind on the death penalty. I know of no study that quantifies what percentage may be opposed, and I doubt we could ever really know, but the group Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights has asked some of its members to walk us through their own conversion stories. It's powerful reading. Here's part of one mother's story: " It was expected by everyone that I would want the death penalty. Not a single person ever sat down and talked with me about other options... " Click here to read this feature in full. Source: The Dallas Morning News, Sept. 29, 2009

COLUMBUS – Will it fail again? Will there be another last-minute court stay or reprieve ordered by the governor? Or will Ohio move ahead and try to execute Romell Broom for the second time in December? Whatever happens, the attention of death penalty opponents and supporters nationwide is focused on the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville – home to the Death House and 32 executions by lethal injection since 1999. The attempted execution of Romell Broom, 53, on Sept. 15 was the first lethal-injection ever stopped due to problems finding a usable vein. The only other time a U.S. execution failed after the process began was more than 50 years ago when Louisiana tried to electrocute 17-year-old Willie Francis. A 5-4 U.S. Supreme Court ordered a second try in the electric chair on May 9, 1947. A plan to try a second time was halted Tuesday by a federal judge after Broom’s attorneys sued the state, saying a repeat attempt would be “cruel and unusual punishment” and “double ...

Death row killer Richard Lee Tabler, whose cell phone calls to a state senator sparked a statewide shakedown of all state prisons nearly a year ago, pleaded guilty this morning to threatening the lawmaker and possessing contraband. During a brief courtroom appearance in Livingston, in East Texas, Tabler got 10-year sentence stacked atop his death sentence. "The message here is that we take these possession of contraband cases seriously especially cell phones on death row and that we will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law," said Gina DeBottis, chief prosecutor with the Special Prosecutions Unit that handles prison cases. "(Tabler) got the maximum sentence possible." Both crimes of which Tabler was charged retaliation and possession of contraband in a state prison were 3rd-degree felonies, punishable by 2-10 years in prison. He could have received 20 years under a special enhancement provision in state law, but because his death sentence is still on appe...

As far as I know, I've made eye contact with only one serial killer, Darrell Keith Rich, in the summer of 1978. I was a 23-year-old reporter, notebook in hand, covering his pretrial proceedings in Shasta County. He was a 23-year-old biker, hands and legs bound in shackles, accused of a two-month rampage of kidnapping, rape and murder. He killed four of the nine females he attacked. His youngest victim, 11 years, old, was abducted, sexually assaulted and thrown off a bridge. She fell 105 feet, hit the rocks and crawled to her death. A year earlier, the California Legislature had reinstituted the death penalty, five years after it had been invalidated by the state Supreme Court as cruel and unusual punishment. The specter of the death penalty did not deter Darrell Rich in the summer of 1978. His crimes were as horrific as those of any villain in a Dirty Harry movie: He used rocks to crush the skulls of two of his victims; he shot a mother twice in the mouth as she pleaded for her lif...

To the many excellent reasons to abolish the death penalty — it’s immoral, does not deter murder and affects minorities disproportionately — we can add one more. It’s an economic drain on governments with already badly depleted budgets. It is far from a national trend, but some legislators have begun to have second thoughts about the high cost of death row. Others would do well to consider evidence gathered by the Death Penalty Information Center, a research organization that opposes capital punishment. States waste millions of dollars on winning death penalty verdicts, which require an expensive second trial, new witnesses and long jury selections. Death rows require extra security and maintenance costs. There is also a 15-to-20-year appeals process, but simply getting rid of it would be undemocratic and would increase the number of innocent people put to death. Besides, the majority of costs are in the pretrial and trial. According to the organization, keeping inmates on death row in...

NOTE: The text below is not intended to be a comprehensive catalogue of botched executions, but simply a listing of examples that are well-known. There are 42 examples listed: 2 by asphyxiation, 10 by electrocution, and 30 by lethal injection.

The man almost took the dirty secret of his death to his grave. The Tarrant County medical examiners office said injuries from a pickup wreck killed him. But after a funeral director hundreds of miles away found a bullet in the mans head, authorities realized a killer was on the loose. Worse has happened in the autopsy suites of Texas medical examiners. A child molester faked his own death and almost got away with it after the Travis County medical examiner mistook the burned body of an 81-year-old woman for the 23-year-old man. A woman was on her way to Death Row in Alabama after a medical examiner now working in Texas said she had suffocated her newborn. The sad truth, other experts said, was that the baby was stillborn. An Austin baby sitter has spent years on death row for a baby's murder. The medical examiner whose testimony helped put her there now says the baby's death may have been an accident. The medical examiner is the doctor-detective who is supposed to ext...

When a Virginia judge set November 10 as the execution date for John Allen Muhammad, mastermind of the sniper attacks that left 10 dead and and terrorised the Washington, DC region in October 2002, the blogosphere was filled with the expected rants about capital punishment. “He is as guilty as they come and if the state is going to have a death penalty, then he is as deserving of the punishment as can be possibly imagined,” wrote one reader on the website of The Washington Post. “Osama bin Laden wishes he could have terrorised as many Americans as this little animal did in 2002. I still remember being nervous about walking out to my car in Bethesda,” a Maryland suburb, wrote another. “Good riddance. They should have done it seven years ago,” a third wrote. Their comments are indicative of the emotions that still run high about a time when Sari Horwitz, a Post reporter, said she “never felt so scared about a story” she was covering. It is because of such feelings that Eric Friedman, an ...

Iran Human Rights, September 26: One woman was hanged in the prison of Sarakhs, north-east Iran, reported the state run Iranian news agency ISNA. The woman, whose name and age were not mentioned, was convicted of murdering her husband 10 years ago in a village near the town of Sarakhs, according to the report. She was hanged in the prison of Sarakhs on Thursday September 24., said the report. Source: Iran Human Rights, Sept. 27, 2009

Todd Willingham's house When a nationally respected fire engineer rebuked an arson investigation that sent a Texas man to his death, the country took notice. The question of whether our state executed an innocent man spurred a national discussion, as media outlets from Nightline to The New Yorker explored whether the fiery deaths of Cameron Todd Willingham's three young children were a tragic accident or capital murder. A growing number of experts have rejected the finding that the fire was arson, arguing that investigators relied on folklore and junk science to reach that unsupported conclusion. Most recently, an expert hired by the Texas Forensic Science Commission issued a scathing report that detailed the many failings of the original arson-murder investigation. Dr. Craig L. Beyler wrote that investigators' conclusions could not be supported by modern science. Beyler's emphatic rejection of the arson conclusion, coupled with similar findings by other forens...

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH/AP) - The murderer who prompted lawmakers to create the state's sex offender registry will soon leave death row. That's because attorneys have reached an agreement to allow Zachary Snider's killer to spend the rest of his life in prison instead. If you look up the state's online sex offender registry you'll see the words "Zachary's Law" in the corner. The case that prompted that law has taken a new turn. Former Indiana State Police Detective Dick Rice showed 24-Hour News 8 where, 16 years ago, he found something he was looking for, something he'll never forget. "We came down here and, just as soon as we got out of the car, there was no question about it. There was this...the stench was terrible. And it was this bridge right here that we're crossing over," recalled Rice. Rice had gotten a tip that he'd find Zachary Snider’s body under the bridge. The 10-year-old boy had been missing a week. Convicted child molest...

The death penalty may have finally crossed a shameful line that, if there is any sense of reason or justice in American society, should bring the practice to a swift and final end. The state of Texas, despite all of the safeguards that proponents of the death penalty claim would prevent this from happening, may have executed an innocent man. A story in the Sept. 7 issue of The New Yorker details the case of Cameron Todd Willingham who was executed on Feb. 17, 2004, by lethal injection in the Texas death house at the state prison in Huntsville. Texas has made the most prolific use of the death penalty since its re–establishment in 1977. Willingham was convicted of murdering his three young children after they died in a house fire on Dec. 23, 1991, in Corsicana, Texas. The unemployed auto mechanic had been at home watching the children while his wife was shopping for Christmas presents for their three daughters. He told investigators that his 2–year–old daughter woke him from a nap sayin...

In 2006, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that there has not been " a single case - not one - in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent's name would be shouted from the rooftops ." Now, the story of Cameron Todd Willingham has garnered national attention, thanks to a recent article, " Trial by Fire ", published in the September 7th edition of the New Yorker. The reporter, David Grann, lays out the powerful story of Willingham's conviction and execution, and demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt what we have known all along: That Cameron Todd Willingham was innocent, and he was executed. As Justice Scalia asked, we are now SHOUTING FROM THE ROOFTOPS that this man was innocent. But we need your help to get the message out. Click here to find out how you can help.

A condemned killer who faces an unprecedented second attempt at lethal injection is at least temporarily back on death row in Ohio. Defense attorney Tim Sweeney said Monday that inmate Romell Broom was moved back to death row at the Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown on Sunday. U.S. District Judge Gregory Frost has suspended another attempt to put Broom to death and plans a hearing next week on requests for a further delay. Gov. Ted Strickland stopped Broom's execution last Tuesday after about two hours when executioners failed to find a usable vein. Broom wept at one point during the procedure and later complained of the needle painfully poking bone and muscle. Source: Associated Press, Sept. 23, 2009

Is subjecting an inmate to a failed execution cruel and unusual punishment? Can a vein save a convicted killer? In the case of Romell Broomit it might. Broom was sentenced to death for raping and murdering 14-year-old Tryna Middleton on Sept. 21, 1984. Broom isn't supposed to be alive to witness the 25th anniversary of Middleton's death but he is. Last Tuesday, the execution team at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility spent several hours trying unsuccessfully to find a viable vein for a lethal injection. Now, Ohio is faced with the difficult task of determining whether it can try to execute Broom a second time, after it botched the 1st attempt. On Sept. 15, an execution team of at least 12 people spent over 2 hours trying to prepare Broom for the three-drug lethal injection. Technicians were able to locate several veins, but none of those veins were strong enough to administer the injection. "The team is required to test the viability of the site with a saline solution...