What would you learn if you watched every execution scene in American film?

Now we know, because it's been done.


And you can read about it here.


Fascinating stuff!

CJ stories you usually do not see in the news ...

Wow, good thing I follow the right people and organizations on Facebook, or else I might have missed these important stories, just as most media organizations usually do.

First, check out this amazing series from PBS titled, "Guilty and Charged" about class bias in the US criminal justice system.

It includes many great stories including this one:

The proliferation of court fees has prompted some states, like New Jersey, to use amnesty programs to encourage the thousands of people who owe fines to surrender in exchange for fee reductions. At the Fugitive Safe Surrender program, makeshift courtrooms allow judges to individually handle each case. hide caption

itoggle captionNicole Beemsterboer/NPR

As Court Fees Rise, The Poor Are Paying The Price

An NPR investigation has found an explosion in the use of fees charged to criminal defendants across the country, which has created a system of justice that targets the poor.

 

Then there is this great story from the National Journal titled, "Treating Prisonsers with Dignity can Reduce Crime." This story notes a recent report from the National Academy of Sciences that notes that countries which humanize prisons actually have more effective prisons! You don't see stories like that in the mainstream news.

 

Finally, there are these stories about states that are so desperate to keep their executions going that they are having to turn back to historically flawed methods like the electric chair and firing squad.

 

 

 

 

Botched execution in the news

Botched executions are nothing new. See?

And then, last night, in Oklahoma, we saw this (from the Death Penalty Information Center):

BREAKING NEWS: (4/29). The first of two planned executions in Oklahoma tonight was botched, with the inmate, Clayton Lockett, dying of a heart attack. Lockett sat up and uttered words, even as the execution was going forward. The second execution of Charles Warner was called off. Oklahoma was trying a new execution protocol for the first time. It had refused to reveal the source of the drugs or the names of those involved.

Why did this happen? Here are the basic facts:

* The Constitutionality of lethal injection in Oklahoma, like in other states, is being challenged on the basis of allegedly causing pain to inmates
* Painful and lingering deaths are considered a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution, according to the US Supreme Court
* States are thus changing their execution protocols, including which drugs they use to put inmates to death and where they get the drugs
* In Oklahoma, the process was kept secret
* Inmates challenged the process
* An Oklahoma court declared a stay in these two executions for this reason
* Oklahoma's governor said she was going to make sure they were killed anyway, in spite of the court order
* The court lifted the stay

And the rest is history. More of our sordid death penalty history, that is.

According to the Associated Press:

Clayton Lockett, 38, was declared unconscious 10 minutes after the first of the state's new three-drug lethal injection combination was administered. Three minutes later, though, he began breathing heavily, writhing, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow.

The blinds were eventually lowered to prevent those in the viewing gallery from watching what was happening in the death chamber, and the state's top prison official eventually called a halt to the proceedings. Lockett died of a heart attack a short time later, the Department of Corrections said.

Now, let's be clear. We're not talking about a nice guy here. From the AP:

A four-time felon, Lockett was convicted of shooting 19-year-old Stephanie Neiman with a sawed-off shotgun and watching as two accomplices buried her alive in rural Kay County in 1999 after Neiman and a friend arrived at a home the men were robbing.

Regardless, to be put to death, the practice has to be Constitutional. And right now, it is not.

Incredibly, another inmate in Oklahoma was supposed to be executed the same night. But his execution was stayed for 14 days after this mess. What was he convicted of?

According to the AP: 

Warner had been scheduled to be put to death two hours later in the same room and on the same gurney. The 46-year-old was convicted of raping and killing his roommate's 11-month-old daughter in 1997. He has maintained his innocence.

See that last part? Don't think it's possible?

Consider this then:

On April 28 a study published in the prestigous Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences indicated that far more innocent people have been sentenced to death than those found through the legal process. According to the study, many innocent defendants are probably not being identified because they were taken off death row and given a lesser sentence. The rate of exonerations for those sentenced to death would be over twice as high if all cases were given the heightened scrutiny often accorded to those who remain on death row. The authors of "The Rate of False Conviction of Criminal Defendants Who are Sentenced to Death" concluded: "[A] conservative estimate of the proportion of erroneous convictions of defendants sentenced to death in the United States from 1973 through 2004 [is] 4.1%." The percentage of death row inmates who were actually exonerated during the time of the study was only 1.6%. Professor Samuel Gross (pictured) of the University of Michigan Law School, one of the authors of the study, pointed to the gravity of the problem: “Since 1973, nearly 8,500 defendants have been sentenced to death in the United States, and 138 of them have been exonerated. Our study means that more than 200 additional innocent defendants have been sentenced to death in that period. Most of these undiscovered innocent capital defendants have been resentenced to life in prison, and then forgotten.”

Are you tired of this process yet?

Capital punishment in the news

Start with this from The Economist: "The Slow death of the death penalty."

Then, move to these:

Business Insider

What botched executions tell us about the death penalty

Boston Globe-Apr 27, 2014

Earlier this month, the New Hampshire State Senate deadlocked on a vote to repeal the state's death penalty, tying 12 to 12 and leaving the law ...

Oregon shows no inclination to carry out the death penalty -- should ...
The Oregonian-Apr 26, 2014

After court drama, Oklahoma to have 2 executions

Charlotte Observer-Apr 24, 2014

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections is working on specifics and logistics of how Tuesday's executions will be carried out, Fallin said.

Calgary Herald

Holy Capital Punishment

National Catholic Reporter (blog)-Apr 19, 2014

The dynamics of capital punishment follow us to this day as we create reasons for justifying its practice. While it's reasonable to assume that ...

NH Senate to vote on repeal of death penalty

Boston Globe-Apr 17, 2014

As the vote has neared, appeals to conscience have intensified. State Senator Nancy Stiles, a Hampton Democrat who backs the death penalty ...

State Senate upholds death penalty; 1 on death row
In-Depth-SFGate-Apr 17, 2014

Explore in depth (239 more articles)

Important news on two major criminal justice policy arenas

First, the drug war is slowly but surely being dismantled, ending, whatever.

For example, see this.

The Smarter Sentencing Act is the biggest overhaul in federal drug sentencing in decades. It would:

• Cut federal mandatory minimums for drug law violations, so that nonviolent offenders serve less time behind bars.
• Make the reform to the crack/powder cocaine sentencing disparity that Congress passed in 2010 retroactive, so that thousands of people sentenced under the old draconian and racially unjust policy can leave prison early.
• Expand the ability of judges to use their own discretion when sentencing defendants, so that judges can consider the unique facts of each case and each individual before them.

Second, states are very desperate, in the face of evidence that lethal injection has serious consequences, to maintain the death penalty, even if it means turning back to old (and seriously flawed execution methods).

Hanging anyone?

Firing squad?

Electrocution?

Wow, all this is happening now, in our lifetime.

Experimental execution in the news

We live in an era where, in spite of overwhelming evidence that the death penalty is unnecessary to reduce crime, ineffective at providing justice, and fundamentally flawed because it is racially biased and a serious threat to the innocent, some states continue to cling to it. This is true, in spite of the national (and international) move away from capital punishment.

Facing shortages of lethal injection drugs, as well as serious legal challenges to the Constitutionality of the traditional three-drug protocol used to kill death row inmates, states are beginning to experiment--yes, EXPERIMENT--with new methods of death (as in by trying them out on living human beings).

Here is one witnesses description of a recent experimental execution in Ohio:

_____________________

At about 10.31am, his stomach swelled up in an unusual way, as though he had a hernia or something like that. Between 10.33am and 10.44am – I could see a clock on the wall of the death house – he struggled and gasped audibly for air.

I was aghast. Over those 11 minutes or more he was fighting for breath, and I could see both of his fists were clenched the entire time. His gasps could be heard through the glass wall that separated us. Towards the end, the gasping faded into small puffs of his mouth. It was much like a fish lying along the shore puffing for that one gasp of air that would allow it to breathe. Time dragged on and I was helpless to do anything, sitting helplessly by as he struggled for breath. I desperately wanted out of that room.

For the next four minutes or so a medical tech listened for a heart beat on both sides of his chest. That seemed to drag on too, like some final cruel ritual, preventing us from leaving. Then, at 10.53am, the warden called the time of death, they closed the curtains, and that was it.

I came out of that room feeling that I had witnessed something ghastly. I was relieved to be out in the fresh air. There is no question in my mind that Dennis McGuire suffered greatly over many minutes. I'd been told that a "normal" execution lasted five minutes – this experimental two-drug concoction had taken 26 minutes. I consider that inhumane.

_____________________

My state, North Carolina, has declared, by law, that lethal injection is not a medical procedure and thus doctors do not need to be present for an execution. Further, the General Assembly has replaced the three-drug protocol with a one-drug protocol (with an unnamed drug) so that it can resume executions by getting around pending lawsuits about the Constitutionality of lethal injection. In essence, the state wants to EXPERIMENT on a living human being.

Is this in the news? No, it is not.

Race and the death penalty back in the news in NC

The issue of race and capital punishment has been widely studied in my state.

So we know the facts.

In 2009, the state passed the historic Racial Justice Act. Then the law was repealed. Twice. (Google it, please)

Yet, race still impacts the imposition of the death penalty in my state, as well as just about everywhere it has ever been studied.

So this story from my state caught my attention:

A university researcher testified on Tuesday that race influenced prosecutors' decisions to reject black jurors from serving on three of Cumberland County's most notorious murder trials.

Between 1990 and August 2010, the race of potential jurors "was a significant factor" in whether prosecutors struck them from death penalty cases, Michigan State University law professor Barbara O'Brien testified at a Racial Justice Act hearing for the three defendants.

The three defendants, Christina Walters, Quintel Augustine and Tilmon Golphin, are on death row. They are attempting to use the N.C. Racial Justice Act to prove racism was a factor that led to their death sentences.

If they win, their sentences will be converted to life in prison without parole.

Walters killed two women as part of a gang initiation ritual. Golphin killed a state trooper and a Cumberland County sheriff's deputy in a traffic stop, and Augustine was convicted for the murder of a Fayetteville police officer.

This hearing hinges on allegations of racism in the jury selection process.

At a trial, defense lawyers and prosecutors vet potential jurors on whether they will be helpful to their side. Some jurors express obvious biases and can be dismissed outright.

But each side may also reject a limited number of jurors without stating a reason for blocking them. These rejections are peremptory challenges.

O'Brien co-authored a statistical study of North Carolina death penalty cases. It says prosecutors have a pattern of using peremptory challenges to block blacks from serving on the juries of capital murder trials. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that potential jurors may not be struck peremptorily because of their race.

O'Brien testified that race was a significant factor in prosecutors' jury selection decisions statewide, locally and in the three defendants' trials. The results "support an inference of intentional discrimination" on the part of the prosecutors, she said.

Statewide, black jurors were twice as likely to be dismissed, she said. They also were twice as likely to be dismissed in Golphin's trial, she said.

At Walters' trial, blacks were struck 3.6 times as often, O'Brien said, and 3.7 times as often during Augustine's trial.

Prosecutors sometimes seat death-penalty qualified jurors who still express reservations about it.

Statewide, O'Brien said, 9.7 percent of black jurors with death penalty reservations were approved by prosecutors versus 26.4 percent of non-black jurors.

In Cumberland County blacks with reservations about the death penalty were seated by prosecutors 5.9 percent of the time, versus 26.3 percent of the time for non-black jurors with such reservations, O'Brien said.

O'Brien analyzed the jury selection patterns both under the Racial Justice Act of 2009 and a the more restrictive version that lawmakers passed this summer after a convicted murderer from Fayetteville used the 2009 law to get off death row.

There is dispute over which version of the law applies to Walters, Golphin and Augustine, so O'Brien analyzed their cases under both versions of the law. Under both standards, she said, she found racial bias.

During cross-examination, Union County Assistant District Attorney Jonathan Perry questioned O'Brien about her notes, decision-making and her methods in analyzing the data. Perry has a statistics background, so he is assisting the Cumberland County District Attorney's Office with the case.

The hearing was stopped after the electricity failed at 4:10 p.m. Much of the city lost power because of a malfunction at the city's power plant, said Public Works Commission board member Lou Olivera.

In other developments:

The defense lawyers are seeking transcripts of the trials of James Burmeister and Malcolm Wright. Burmeister and Wright were two racist skinheads in the Army who in 1995 went to a poor neighborhood in Fayetteville and killed a black man and woman they found there.

Prosecutors unsuccessfully sought death sentences for Burmeister and Wright. Burmeister died in prison; Wright is serving life without parole.

The District Attorney's Office was looking for the transcripts on Tuesday afternoon.

Augustine wrote a note to his mother, who attended the trial, and lawyer James Ferguson II attempted to deliver it to her. That was a security violation, so Ferguson was stopped.

The incident is to be discussed when the hearing resumes.

So, yes, race is still a problem in the state, in the sense that it continues to impact death penalty practice. So we've got that covered this semester at App State!

2 men, same state, both executed, both innocent

The Huffington Post carried an article outlining some of the similiarities between Carlos DeLuna and Cameron Willamham, both convicted, sentenced to death, and executed for murders they did not commit.

One of the similarities? Shockingly bad police work.

Read more:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/16/carlos-deluna-cameron-todd-willingham_n_1521755.html?ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

Innocent people killed by death penalty?

It's been all over the news lately, the case of Carlos DeLuna ... the high likelihood that the state of Texas killed yet another innocent man.

Another? Yes, wait for it.

Here is the story from the Death Penalty Information Center:

INNOCENCE: New Evidence That Texas May Have Executed an Innocent Man

Posted: May 15, 2012

In one of the most comprehensive investigations ever undertaken about the execution of a possibly innocent defendant, Professor James Liebman and other researchers at Columbia University Law School have published a groundbreaking report on the case of Carlos DeLuna (pictured), who was executed in Texas in 1989.  This "Anatomy of a Wrongful Execution" is being published today (May 15) in Columbia's Human Rights Law Review.  Prof. Liebman concluded DeLuna was innocent and was wrongly convicted "on the thinnest of evidence: a single, nighttime, cross-ethnic eyewitness identification and no corroborating forensics." DeLuna maintained his innocence from the time of his arrest until his execution, claiming that the actual culprit was Carlos Hernandez, who looked so similar to DeLuna that friends and family had mistaken photos of the two men for each other. Prosecutors called Hernandez a "phantom" of DeLuna's imagination, although Hernandez was known to police and prosecutors because of his history of violent crimes, including armed robberies and an arrest for a murder similar to the one for which DeLuna was executed. Liebman's investigation found that Hernandez "spent years bragging around Corpus Christi that he, not his tocayo - his namesake and 'twin' - Carlos DeLuna, killed Wanda Lopez."

For years, opponents of the death penalty have pointed out the very real possibility that innocent people are killed with the death penalty. They've pointed to things like the "innocence list" from the Death Penalty Information Center, which now stands at an amazing 140 people released from death row since 1973.

Supporters have often responded with, where is your proof? Name one person who is innocent that is actually killed. And until recently, it was difficult to provide an answer.

The Death Penalty Information Center maintains a page featuring people executed despite serious doubts about their guilt. On that page are NINE cases, including that of Carlos DeLuna, noted above.

But also on that page is the case of Cameron Willingham, also out of Texas, which has also received an enormous amount of news:

Cameron Willingham Texas Convicted: 1992, Executed: 2004
After examining evidence from the capital prosecution of Cameron Willingham, four national arson experts have concluded that the original investigation of Willingham's case was flawed, and it is possible the fire was accidental. The independent investigation, reported by the Chicago Tribune, found that prosecutors and arson investigators used arson theories that have since been repudiated by scientific advances. Willingham was executed in 2004 in Texas despite his consistent claims of innocence. He was convicted of murdering his three children in a 1991 house fire.
Arson expert Gerald Hurst said, "There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire. It was just a fire." Former Louisiana State University fire instructor Kendall Ryland added, "[It] made me sick to think this guy was executed based on this investigation.... They executed this guy and they've just got no idea - at least not scientifically - if he set the fire, or if the fire was even intentionally set."

Willingham was convicted of capital murder after arson investigators concluded that 20 indicators of arson led them to believe that an accelerent had been used to set three separate fires inside his home. Among the only other evidence presented by prosecutors during the the trial was testimony from jailhouse snitch Johnny E. Webb, a drug addict on psychiatric medication, who claimed Willingham had confessed to him in the county jail.

Some of the jurors who convicted Willingham were troubled when told of the new case review. Juror Dorinda Brokofsky asked, "Did anybody know about this prior to his execution? Now I will have to live with this for the rest of my life. Maybe this man was innocent." Prior to the execution, Willingham's defense attorneys presented expert testimony regarding the new arson investigation to the state's highest court, as well as to Texas Governor Rick Perry. No relief was granted and Willingham was executed on February 17, 2004. Coincidentally, less than a year after Willingham's execution, arson evidence presented by some of the same experts who had appealed for relief in Willingham's case helped free Ernest Willis from Texas's death row. The experts noted that the evidence in the Willingham case was nearly identical to the evidence used to exonerate Willis. (Chicago Tribune, December 9, 2004).

Read "Texas Man Executed on Disproved Forensics" by Steve Mills and Maurice Possley, Chicago Tribune (December 9, 2004)
Read "Was an Innocent Man Executed in Texas?" by Anderson Cooper 360 Blog (April 9, 2007)
See also The Ernest Willis Case

The point of all this? It is pretty clear to anyone with any brain activity that the state of Texas has executed AT LEAST two innocent people.And why Texas? Because they lead the free world in the number of executions every year. And we know that the more a state carries out executions, the more mistakes they will make.

Some will react to this news with horror. Others won't care. Seriously, for some it is just an unfortunate reality, the cost of doing justice.

I think of people who have argued publicly that they support the death penalty even knowing that  innocent people are occasionally innocent. One such person--Louis Pojman--even wrote something to the effect of this:

We know that, when firefighters are fighting fires, that a fire truck will occasionally run through a red light and kill an innocent bystander. Yet, we don't abolish firefighting just because every once in a while an innocent person is killed. After all, firefighters serve a vital function for society. They save lives.

This analogy has always bothered me. First, the death penalty is different than firefighting. Fire fighters aim to save lives; the death penalty merely takes lives (there is now literally no valid evidence that the death penalty deters murder and thus saves lives). Second, of course we don't abolish firefighting. There is no other way to put out fires. There are, however, other ways to reduce murder and to punish murderers. And they do not run the risk of killing an innocent person.

Many Americans really care about "big government." Amazingly, they get all upset when the government taxes them too much. We even have a new "Tea Party" (even though tax rates are at an all-time low; they are lower now than under the previous President and far lower than the last Democratic President). But they couldn't care less about the government killing them and their fellow citizens, apparently even when the people being killed are innocent.

Fortunately for those of us who see it differently, the writing is on the wall. Innocent people being killed by states will end the death penalty. We are well on our way, even in North Carolina where studies show the death penalty to be rare, ineffective, costly, racially biased, and a threat to the innocent. Hopefully, Texas will join the sane world soon.

 

Look at what is happening to the death penalty

From the Death Penalty Information Center ...

RECENT LEGISLATION: Governor's Signature Makes Connecticut Fifth State in Five Years to End Death Penalty

     

On April 25, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy (pictured) signed into law a bill that replaces the death penalty with life without parole. Connecticut is the fifth state in five years, and the 17th overall, to do away with capital punishment. Governor Malloy, who once supported the death penalty, offered the following statement: “My position on the appropriateness of the death penalty in our criminal justice system evolved over a long period of time. As a young man, I was a death penalty supporter. Then I spent years as a prosecutor and pursued dangerous felons in court, including murderers. In the trenches of a criminal courtroom, I learned firsthand that our system of justice is very imperfect. While it’s a good system designed with the highest ideals of our democratic society in mind, like most of human experience, it is subject to the fallibility of those who participate in it. I saw people who were poorly served by their counsel. I saw people wrongly accused or mistakenly identified. I saw discrimination. In bearing witness to those things, I came to believe that doing away with the death penalty was the only way to ensure it would not be unfairly imposed." See more of the governor's statement below.

• Read more

Death Penalty Repeal Initiative Qualifies for Ballot in California

On April 23, the SAFE California Act, an initiative to replace California’s death penalty with a sentence of life without parole, qualified for the November 2012 ballot by presenting an ample number of qualified signatures. The initiative garnered almost 800,000 signatures for the measure that would repeal the death penalty and make capital crimes punishable by life in prison without parole. The initiative would also require inmates to work in prison to help pay restitution to the families of victims, and would send $30 million annually for three years to local law enforcement agencies to help solve murder and rape cases. Ron Briggs, who sponsored the 1978 initiative that expanded the death penalty in California, recently expressed support for repeal of the law. In a recent op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Briggs endorsed the SAFE California campaign, saying “I still believe that society must be protected from the most heinous criminals, and that they don't deserve to ever again be free. But I'd like to see them serve their terms with the general prison population, where they could be required to work and pay restitution into the victims' compensation fund. There are few 'do-overs' in life, especially in politics. With the death penalty, though, 34 years later I have an opportunity to set things right.”

Read more

It is slow, but it is sure. The death penalty is dying in America.

Death penalty in the news again today

From the LA Times:

The fight against the death penalty is gaining momentum, opponents of the practice say, with Connecticut's decision this month to abolish capital punishment making it the fifth state in five years to so do.

"For this to be happening in succession, and coupled with the decline in death penalty convictions, it creates a momentum that other states will at least consider to be a part of," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the independent Death Penalty Information Center.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-death-penalty-20120415,0,4967063.story

And a lot of what is motivating these actions is costs. The death penalty just costs more.

For example, here is yet another example from yet another study or yet another state:

COSTS: Death Penalty Cases in Nevada Cost $200K Extra, Just for Defense

Posted: April 16, 2012

A recent study of the death penalty in Nevada compared the costs of defending capital and non-capital murder cases. The study, conducted by Dr. Terance Miethe of the Department of Criminal Justice at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, looked at the time spent by defense attorneys at various stages of a case. The study’s findings included:
- Clark County public defense attorneys spent an average of 2,298 hours on a capital murder case compared to an average of 1,087 hours on a non-capital murder case--a difference of 1,211 hours, or 112%.
- Defending the average capital murder case in Clark County cost $229,800 for a Public Defender or $287,250 for appointed counsel. The additional cost of capital murder cases was $170,000 to $212,000 per case compared to the cost of a non-capital murder case in the same county.
- The 80 pending capital murder cases in Clark County will cost approximately $15 million more than if they were prosecuted without seeking the death penalty.


It really says something about us that we are so heavily influenced by money, and that we make decisions about whether to pursue policies that ought to be influenced by concerns for justice rather than by money. But at least states are looking at the issue of capital punishment again.

Oh and then there is this from the New York Times!

"... the system cannot [of capital punishment] be fixed. It is practically impossible to rid the legal process of biases driven by race, class and politics."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/opinion/more-evidence-against-the-death-penalty.html?_r=1&src=tp&smid=fb-share

An interesting argument about the role of the media in capital punishment

I was searching Google news today and found this argument, posted only a couple of days ago, about our current system of capital punishment.

Interestingly, while this writer supports the death penalty, he agrees with me that the system of capital punishment is a "farce" (the very word I use to describe it, along with other "F" words). His problem is that he wants to kill them all and believes that institutions including the media interfere so that it is not possible.

If only we could push a button to kill them all!

 Here is the introduction:


In common parlance, "getting away with murder" is a metaphor for doing something wrong without suffering deserved adverse consequences.  Getting away with actual murder has meant that the killer did not get caught, or else he avoided conviction or appropriate punishment thanks to a good lawyer (often taking advantage of judge-concocted rules favoring guilty defendants).

In recent decades, however, getting away with murder has been infused with new meaning: purposeful government policy now grants murderers immunity from punishment for new crimes.
Out of thin air, a right has been officially and surreptitiously created exclusively for select previously convicted murderers: the right to commit, cost-free, further violence, and even further murders.  When judges, legislators, and governors make capital punishment impossible in willful defiance of great public support, they liberate those already serving life sentences to fearlessly perpetrate as many additional vicious crimes as they can because they face no greater penalty. 

This shocking reality, known to those few immersed in what passes for the criminal "justice" system, is covered up by our murderer-protective media.





____________________________________

So, see he blames the media for this. Read it, it's worth it.


http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/crime_without_punishment.html#ixzz1igW07qqg

Death penalty in North Carolina

In the news ...

BOONE -- My hope for the New Year is that lawmakers in North Carolina will finally find the courage to abolish the death penalty, a punishment rooted in politics rather than science, and simultaneously get serious about reducing crime.

Research in the state, summarized in my report "The Death Penalty in North Carolina: A Summary of the Data and Scientific Studies," shows that capital punishment is rare, ineffective, expensive, biased and imperfect. The only thing left to do now is acknowledge this and put an end to it.

For decades North Carolina was one of the leading death penalty states. We were one of the top 10 states in terms of the number of people we sentenced to death and executed in any given year. And yet our murder rate was also always above the national average.

In the past decade, this all changed as the practice of capital punishment in the state has faced serious challenges. We've seen problems with the quality of representation offered to defendants. We've discovered that innocent people have been convicted and sentenced to death. And we've seen clear evidence of racial bias.

The good news is that the state has taken steps to address each of these problems.

First, the Office of Indigent Services was created in 2000 to reduce the representation of capital defendants by unqualified and inexperienced defense attorneys. Second, the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission was established in 2006 to investigate and evaluate post-conviction claims of factual innocence. And in 2009, the state passed the Racial Justice Act, which bans racial discrimination in the death penalty and corrects for it by setting aside death sentences in cases where race "is shown to have been a significant factor" in seeking or imposing the death penalty.

The General Assembly recently repealed this law, but the governor vetoed the repeal; only a three-fifths vote by legislators will override the veto.

The bad news is that all our efforts to correct for the problems of the death penalty in our state amount to what former Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun called "tinkering with the machinery of death." The result is a freakishly rare system of capital punishment that requires taxpayers to spend tens of millions of dollars to maintain but not actually use.

North Carolina courts now hand out only about three death sentences a year, and the state has not executed anyone since August 2006 because of unresolved disputes over the lethal injection process.

When Justice Blackmun said he would no longer tinker with the machinery of death in 1994, he added: "For more than 20 years I have endeavored ... to develop ... rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor ... I feel ... obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed. It is virtually self-evident to me now that no combination of procedural rules or substantive regulations ever can save the death penalty from its inherent constitutional deficiencies."

Ironically, Blackmun was one of the jurists who dissented in the 1987 case, McCleskey v. Kemp, which rejected the appeal of Warren McCleskey, whose attorneys showed that killers of whites (and especially black killers of whites) were more likely to be sentenced to death in Georgia; this is the reality of capital punishment in North Carolina today.

That ruling gave us the impossible-to-prove standard that individuals must be able to show that state officials discriminated against them as individuals in order to overturn a death sentence; this is the standard Republican legislators want to return to by striking down the Racial Justice Act.

Whereas it's too late for Blackmun, it's not too late for North Carolina. Our own experience over the past decade proves that we can live without the death penalty.

As death sentences declined in North Carolina in what was the greatest overall reduction in death sentences in the country in the first decade of the 21st century, the murder rate also fell. In 2000, the state's murder rate ranked it eighth in the nation; by 2010, the state's murder rate was the lowest level in our recorded history and was down to 15th in the nation.

We now have all the facts.

The only thing standing in the way of abolition is a lack of courage. May this be the year we finally do the right thing and kill the death penalty. In its place, let's get serious about reducing crime by pursuing strategies rooted in science that are proven to work.

 

http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/01/02/1743006/evidence-against-the-death-penalty.html

Perdue veto saves death-row appeal law

From the Raleigh News and Observer:

An attempt by the state's district attorneys, backed by Republican lawmakers, to derail North Carolina's two-year-old law allowing statistical evidence of racial bias to overturn death sentences appears to have failed with the governor's veto of their bill Wednesday.

Governor Perdue vetoed SB 9, which had overturned the state's historic Racial Justice Act, passed just in 2009.

... there appears to be little chance of that this time. House Republicans would have to lure five Democrats to muster the 72 votes necessary for the three-fifths margin.

Although five conservative Democrats broke ranks with their party on other issues this year, one of them, Rep. Bill Owens from Elizabeth City, said Wednesday he will not vote for an override. Another, Rep. Jim Crawford from Oxford, said he probably won't, and a third, Rep. Dewey Hill from Brunswick County, said he doesn't know.

Without those five votes, Republican leaders would have to look for an opportunity to spring an override vote on a day when not enough Democrats show up for a session, which House Speaker Thom Tillis has said is a possibility.

In response to a public records request from The News & Observer, the governor's office on Wednesday released some of the correspondence the office has received on the issue since the beginning of November. Of the nearly 300 emails and eight letters provided, all but four urged Perdue to veto the bill.

 

So it was NOT even close. Thus, what Perdue did is supported by the public.

 

And her reason?

"I am vetoing Senate Bill 9 for the same reason that I signed the Racial Justice Act two years ago: It is simply unacceptable for racial prejudice to play a role in the imposition of the death penalty in North Carolina."

 

Amen!

Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/12/15/1711801/perdue-veto-saves-death-row-appeal.html#ixzz1gc6IBggw

Newsweek magazine goes criminal justice crazy

I get this magazine in the mail every week.

And this week I open it up and BAM! A new section titled, "Criminal Justice."

Stories include:

  

"The Death of the Death Penalty" (about America's move away from capital punishment)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/25/the-death-of-the-death-penalty.html

"I Committed Murder" (about how executioners feel after they kill someone)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/25/i-committed-murder.html

"I Ordered Death in Georgia" (one executioner's account)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/25/ordering-death-in-georgia-prisons.html

"God, It’s Got to Stop" (one man's quest to end gang violence)
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/09/25/god-it-s-got-to-stop.html


And finally, the magazine is worth reading again.

Death penalty in the news

In case you have not been paying attention, the death penalty has been in the news lately.

A lot.

Largely because the state of Georgia may have killed an innocent man based on horribly unreliable eyewitness testimony.

I am pleased the debate is being heard once again.


Check it out:

Troy Davis: The Price of "Justice" Was Too High

Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III, Truthout

Troy Davis and Our Pro-Life Government

David Swanson, War Is a Crime

Only Conservatives Can End the Death Penalty

E.J. Dionne Jr., The Washington Post Writers Group

_______________________

We know the facts of the death penalty. I've demonstrated them clearly in my state.

Now it is up to people in power to do something about it.

This is a failed policy based on flawed logic and not at all informed by scientific evidence.

It does not reduce crime.

It does not bring closure to victims' families.

It does not provide justice for society.

It is a slow and expensive process that costs more than life imprisonment.

It is racially biased.

And it is prone to serious error.

Yet we cling to it out of simple tradition. The time has come for a new tradition. And I welcome it.

North Carolina death penalty study in the news

I'll be on a live radio show today at NOON on North Carolina Public Radio: "The State of Things." Listen live or download it later here: http://wunc.org/programs/tsot

The State of Things — North Carolina Public Radio WUNC

wunc.org

The State of Things is a live program hosted by Frank Stasio devoted to bringing the issues, personalities, and places of North Carolina to our listeners. We present the Tar Heel experience through sound, story, discussion, commentary and listener participation through calls.

And here is some of the news coverage, so far!


http://www.newsobserver.com/2011/03/16/1056240/face-up-to-the-facts-and-end-the.html


http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/studies-north-carolinas-death-penalty-error-prone-and-extremely-rare

http://www.news.appstate.edu/2011/04/13/n-c-death-penalty/

http://www.wgnc.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=12191%3An-c-death-penalty-review-provides-data-for-lawmakers-and-others-%C2%BB-news-archive-%C2%BB-appalachian-state-university-news&catid=82%3Anc-news-by-google&Itemid=241




And more too ...

Death penalty in NC should be scrapped, scholar's report says
Shelby Star - ‎3 hours ago‎
AP RALEIGH (AP) — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
WWAY NewsChannel 3 - ‎4 hours ago‎
RALEIGH, NC (AP) -- An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
The Virginian-Pilot - ‎4 hours ago‎
AP An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research today at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice office in ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
Greenville Daily Reflector - ‎5 hours ago‎
AP RALEIGH, NC (AP) — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for ...
WFMY News 2

Professor: NC Death Penalty Process Flawed
WFMY News 2 - ‎6 hours ago‎
Raleigh, NC -- An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice ...

NC Scholar'S Report Calls For End to Death Penalty
WNCT - ‎6 hours ago‎
By AP Writer | (AP) RALEIGH, NC (AP) An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
BlueRidgeNow.com - ‎7 hours ago‎
AP An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice office in ...

NC Scholar's Report Calls For End To Death Penalty
WITN - ‎7 hours ago‎
An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice office in Raleigh. ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
Daily Comet - ‎8 hours ago‎
AP RALEIGH, NC - An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
Stamford Advocate - ‎8 hours ago‎
RALEIGH, NC (AP) — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
Albany Times Union - ‎8 hours ago‎
RALEIGH, NC (AP) — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
Ct Post - ‎8 hours ago‎
RALEIGH, NC (AP) — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
Beaumont Enterprise - ‎8 hours ago‎
RALEIGH, NC (AP) — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
Greenwich Time - ‎8 hours ago‎
RALEIGH, NC (AP) — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
San Antonio Express - ‎8 hours ago‎
RALEIGH, NC (AP) — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
Danbury News Times - ‎8 hours ago‎
RALEIGH, NC (AP) — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
Charlotte Observer - ‎9 hours ago‎
AP RALEIGH, NC An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
WECT-TV6 - ‎9 hours ago‎
AP - April 18, 2011 4:15 AM ET RALEIGH, NC (AP) - An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
WBTV - ‎9 hours ago‎
AP - April 18, 2011 4:15 AM ET RALEIGH, NC (AP) - An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
WLOS - ‎9 hours ago‎
RALEIGH, NC (AP) -- An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
Myrtle Beach Sun News - ‎9 hours ago‎
AP RALEIGH, NC -- An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
News & Observer - ‎9 hours ago‎
AP RALEIGH -- An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research today at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice ...

Repeal Capital Punishment in North Carolina, Says Study
Public News Service - ‎9 hours ago‎
... recent revelation that evidence has been mishandled by the state crime lab, possibly sending innocent people to death row, as study author Dr. Matthew Robinson, professor of government and justice studies at Appalachian State University, explains. ...

Report by Appalachian State professor says NC death penalty process should be ...
My Fox 8 - ‎9 hours ago‎
By AP RALEIGH, NC (AP) — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for ...

Report by Appalachian State professor says NC death penalty process should be ...
WTKR Your NewsChannel 3 - ‎9 hours ago‎
By AP RALEIGH, NC (AP) — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty
WRAL.com - ‎9 hours ago‎
RALEIGH, NC — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice ...

Report by Appalachian State professor says NC death penalty process should be ...
Daily Journal - ‎9 hours ago‎
AP RALEIGH, NC — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice ...

Report by Appalachian State professor says NC death penalty process should be ...
The Republic - ‎9 hours ago‎
AP RALEIGH, NC — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina's death penalty process is so full of flaws it should be repealed. Matthew Robinson is scheduled to release his research Monday at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice ...
An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina lawmakers should seriously consider repealing the death penalty because it's financially expensive, carried out infrequently and doesn't deter crime. Matthew Robinson spoke at a Monday news conference assembled by the state's trial lawyer

Put the death penalty itself on trial
And it would collapse under the preponderance of evidence:

Robinson analyzed years of data about the death penalty, which he said costs millions of dollars annually and capital murder cases are nearly four times more expensive than non-capital cases. He said seven people have been exonerated and freed from North Carolina's death row since the early 1970s.

If the Republicans really want to cut wasteful programs, this should be at the top of their list. But first they'd have to join us here in the 21st Century.
http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2011/apr/19/WSMET01-death-penalty-ineffective-too-expensive-ne-ar-959351/

Published: April 19, 2011, Winston Salem Journal, http://www2.journalnow.com/news/2011/apr/19/WSMET01-death-penalty-ineffective-too-expensive-ne-ar-959351/

Death penalty ineffective, too expensive, new study says
By MICHAEL HEWLETT

North Carolina should repeal the death penalty because it is expensive, ineffective and racially biased, an Appalachian State University professor says in a new study.

The study was done by Matthew Robinson, a professor of government and justice studies. Robinson analyzed data from more than 20 studies on the death penalty and released his findings Monday at a news conference in Raleigh.

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty

Beaumont Enterprise
...NC (AP) — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina... which he said costs millions of dollars annually and capital murder cases ...

NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty

Danbury News Times

RALEIGH, NC (AP) — An Appalachian State University professor says North Carolina lawmakers should seriously consider repealing the
death penalty because it's financially expensive, carried out infrequently and doesn't deter crime.


NC scholar's report calls for end to death penalty | The Asheville Citizen-Times | citizen-times.com
www.citizen-times.com

North Carolina Death Penalty study in the news

N.C. Death Penalty Review Provides Data for Lawmakers and Others

BOONE—While North Carolina was once a leading death penalty state, capital punishment has become rare, in part because of an unofficial moratorium on
capital punishment in effect for the past five years, pending review of the protocol followed with the lethal injection process.

Appalachian State University professor Matthew Robinson thinks it’s time for lawmakers to consider the effectiveness of the state’s capital punishment system
as a deterrent to crime as well as its cost.

Robinson, who teaches in Appalachian’s Department of Government and Justice Studies, is the author of “Death Nation: The Experts Explain American Capital
Punishment,” “Justice Blind? Ideals and Realities of American Criminal Justice” and other books related to crime and the criminal justice system.

Robinson recently compiled a 57-page report titled “The Death Penalty in North Carolina: A Summary of the Data and Scientific Studies. “The goal was to provide
one document that the General Assembly could access if they want to know the facts about the death penalty in North Carolina,” he said of the report. It is
available at http://pscj.appstate.edu/ncdeathpenalty/ncdeathpenaltyfinal.pdf.

Robinson will join other scholars to discuss the report at a press conference Monday, April 18, at 11 a.m. at the North Carolina Advocates for Justice
building at 1312 Annapolis Dr. in Raleigh in room CLE 1 and 2.

Robinson’s review of some 24 studies or reports includes information about the cost of executions versus life in prison, and public opinion about the death
penalty.

In his report Robinson writes, “Death sentences have declined in North Carolina executions have been halted, murders have declined, and a large majority of
state residents support a moratorium on executions. This is an appropriate time to carefully assess the state’s capital punishment system. A fundamental
question for policy-makers to consider is this—is capital punishment a necessary practice for North Carolina?”

He said lawmakers should consider if the death penalty meets its goals or providing closure for victims, retribution to society, deterrence from murder,
and reduced murder rate. “Is capital punishment something that we believe is a necessary policy. Is it something we need to keep doing,” Robinson asked? “And
do the benefits the state and society might realize from death penalty outweigh its costs?”

According to N.C. Department of Corrections data, currently 158 prisoners are on death row. The most recent incarceration was in March, the oldest was in 1985.
Since 1977, only 9.9 percent of people sentenced to death in the state have been executed.

According to a report published by Duke University’s School of Public Policy, it costs the state $2.16 million more for a death sentence case than a trial that
leads to life in prison or a lengthy prison sentence when considering the cost of a trial, legal defense, appeals and incarceration.

“We are spending an enormous amount of money for a system we rarely use and that studies show has significant racial biases,” Robinson said.

Notice the press conference is Monday at 11 am in Raleigh!

Murder Victims for Reconciliation says ...

... Progress on the death penalty!

As in, move forward not backwards.

From the oped:

"The death penalty is on its way to becoming a relic of a past era. Illinois recently became the 16th state to end the death penalty when its governor signed a bill repealing that state's capital punishment law and reallocating funds from its Capital Litigation Trust Fund to provide services to murder victims' family members and law enforcement ..."

"Instead of turning back the clock to a time when tainted prosecutions and racial bias were tolerated in our death penalty system, North Carolina needs to face the truth and join Illinois and the growing number of states that have concluded that tinkering with the machinery of death just isn't enough. We must eliminate it altogether."

http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/2011/03/29/1078954?sac=Opin