FEATURED POST

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

Image
California is transferring everyone on death row at San Quentin prison to other places, as it tries to reinvent the state's most notorious facility as a rehabilitation centre. Many in this group will now have new freedoms. But they are also asking why they've been excluded from the reform - and whether they'll be safe in new prisons. Keith Doolin still remembers the day in 2019 when workers came to dismantle one of the United States' most infamous death chambers.

Montana lawmakers asked to revise, abolish death penalty

Montana
A Montana lawmaker wants to require prosecutors to provide indisputable biological proof that a person committed a capital crime before that person can be sentenced to death.

The House Judiciary Committee is set to hear a bill Wednesday by Rep. Brad Hamlett, D-Cascade, that would require there be DNA or other biological proof that a judge finds conclusively establishes the defendant's guilt before they can be sentenced to death.

The measure would save the state money because fewer people would be sentenced to death, creating fewer appeals and reducing court costs, Hamlett said.

"Whether you agree with the death penalty or not, I think we can all agree we don't want innocent people being executed, period," Hamlett said Tuesday.

Montana is 1 of 30 states with the death penalty, but it can't execute anybody because of a judge's ruling that the Department of Corrections doesn't have access to the specific lethal injection drugs that are allowed under state law. The most recent execution in Montana was in 2006.

Republican Rep. Mike Hopkins of Missoula is sponsoring a separate bill seeking to abolish the death penalty entirely - including the sentences of the 2 men on death row. Hopkins' bill also has been assigned to the House Judiciary Committee, although a hearing date has not been set.

State lawmakers have rejected efforts to repeal the death penalty for at least the past two decades. Hopkins said the time is now.

"If you're a person that just generally believes the death penalty is wrong, then the death penalty is wrong and it should be abolished," Hopkins said. "If you're a person that believes in fiscal responsibility or the concept that policy should actually do what the policy says, then the death penalty should be abolished because we have a death penalty under which nobody dies."

William J. Gollehon faces the death penalty for killing a fellow inmate during a 1990 riot at the state prison. He was already been serving a life sentence for killing a woman in Billings in 1985.

Ronald Allen Smith was sentenced to death in March 1983 for killing two hitchhikers in August 1982.

The state has had to pay for special attorneys to defend Gollehon and Smith and file appeals on their behalf as well as defended lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the penalty and the protocol used to carry it out, Hopkins argued.

Montana's neighbor to the south, Wyoming, also is considering abolishing the death penalty. A repeal bill passed the state House last week and is now pending in the Senate.

Last year, Washington state's supreme court ruled the death penalty there is unconstitutional, and Delaware's high court did the same in 2016. Nebraska lawmakers repealed the death penalty in 2015, but it was reinstated by voters the following year.

New Mexico, Illinois, Connecticut and Maryland have all repealed the death penalty in their states over the last decade, while governors in Oregon, Colorado and Pennsylvania have declared moratoriums in their states.

Source: Associated Press, February 7, 2019


⚑ | 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)

‘A Short Film About Killing’: The movie that brought an end to the Polish death penalty

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

Bali | British grandmother on death row for more than 10 years for drug smuggling given ‘one final hope of escape'

Congo reinstates death penalty after 20-year hiatus

Georgia Court Case Tests the Limits of Execution Secrecy in the United States

Georgia | Death penalty trial for accused Atlanta spa shooter in limbo

Iran | Man executed in Qazvin

Malaysia | Death sentence commuted for ex-cop who killed toddler, babysitter

Alabama | Judge formally imposes death penalty on man who gunned down Mobile cop