Some States Hide Parts of Execution Process; AP Sues Idaho

The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled in 2002 that every aspect of an execution should be open to witnesses, from the moment the condemned enters the death chamber to the heartbeat, says the Associated Press. The ruling established what was expected of the nine  states in the court's jurisdiction. A decade later, four of the states have kept part of each execution away from public view. Idaho, Arizona, Washington and Montana, have conducted 14 lethal injections since the ruling, and half of each procedure has been behind closed doors. That means that witnesses, including news reporters who act as representatives of the public, do not see, for instance, the insertion of the IVs that deliver the fatal drug mixture.

The practice comes at a time when the method itself has drawn greater scrutiny, from whether the drugs are effective to whether the execution personnel are properly trained. The states that limit access say they do so to protect the anonymity of the execution team, which may include emergency medical technicians, military medics, or others trained to insert IVs. Open government and journalism groups argue that witnessing all aspects of an execution is the only way to determine if it is being properly carried out. The AP and 16 other organizations this week sued Idaho to force officials to open the entirety of their executions, arguing that the news media, and by extension the public, has a First Amendment right to view all steps of lethal injections.

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NC Committee Pushes to Ban Death Row Inmates from TV Watching

TX Execution Flap Called Textbook Example of Need for ID Reform

Legislative sponsors of a law tightening procedures for police lineups faulted Corpus Christi, Tx., police for allowing eyewitnesses in a 1983 convenience store robbery-murder to identify the suspect as he sat handcuffed in the back seat of a squad car, reports the Houston Chronicle. State Sen. Rodney Ellis and Rep. Pete Gallego stopped short of claiming Texas wrongfully executed Carlos DeLuna for the murder of store clerk Wanda Lopez. Gallego said the way Corpus Christi police handled the suspect's identification was a "textbook example" of why the system needs to be reformed.

"What appears to be very faulty eyewitness identification was the main evidence used to reach a conviction in this case," Ellis said. "The chief witness appears to have gone back and forth on how certain he was that Mr. DeLuna was the culprit. You cannot have this level of uncertainty in death penalty cases." Accounts of the case were presented in a 400-page article in the Columbia Human Rights Law Review. Authors argue that the crime actually was committed by Carlos Hernandez, a DeLuna acquaintance with a history of convenience store robberies. Only car salesman Kevan Baker saw Lopez struggle with her assailant, the article says. Baker later told researchers he was only 70 percent sure of his identification.

Did Texas Execute the Wrong "Carlos" For 1983 Murder?

The Columbia University Human Rights Law Review published a 400-page article asserting that Texas executed in an innocent man in the 1983 Corpus Christi killing of Wanda Lopez, bypassing a potential suspect who had bragged of killing her. The Houston Chronicle calls the critique the latest in which death penalty opponents seek to prove that Texas, with 482 executions since 1982, killed an innocent man. Steve Schiwetz, lead prosecutor at the executed man's trial, disputed the authors' conclusions. "These guys are crusaders," he said. "What can I say?"

The journal article presents the stories of Carlos DeLuna and Carlos Hernandez, who shared darkly handsome looks and a history of substance abuse and violence against women. DeLuna, 27, executed for Lopez's murder in 1989, was "childlike" and a "follower," acquaintances told researchers. Hernandez bragged of killing Lopez and laughed about DeLuna taking the fall. He died in prison in 1999 at 45. The journal article grew out of a 2003 student project to examine Texas capital cases in which a single eyewitness account was key to conviction. "This case changed my whole view," said Columbia Law professor James Liebman. "I had thought the problem cases were ones where you have an out-of-town defendant, a scary person who commits a really bad crime that grabs the whole community. The police are under so much pressure to find someone that something goes wrong. Now, I think the worst cases are those that likely happen every day in which no one cares that much about the defendant or the victim."

As Death Penalty Cases Proceed in NC, Executions Are In Doubt

If a North Carolina jury finds him guilty in an ongoing trial, Jason Williford will get a death sentence in the 2010 rape and beating death of state school board member Kathy Taft, says WRAL. In Durham, prosecutors say are seeking the death penalty for O'Brian McNeil White, who is charged in a March shooting at a tire store. Even if courts hand down the state's ultimate sanction in these high-profile crimes, death penalty experts say it's impossible to say when, or even if, the sentences will ever be carried out.

North Carolina, which has 156 prisoners on death row, has not executed an inmate since Aug. 18, 2006, when Samuel R. Flippen was put to death by lethal injection for the beating death of his two-year-old step daughter. Since then, a complex and evolving set of legal challenges have imposed a de facto moratorium on the death penalty in North Carolina. The controversial Racial Justice Act, a 2009 law that allows death row prisoners to use statistical evidence of discrimination to appeal their sentence, has played a part in this stalemate. So have other prisoner appeals that question whether the state's execution method is cruel and unusual or their crimes were investigated fairly.

Life or Death: Are any punishments effective in deterring homicide?

A new report questions whether capital punishment is less or more effective as a deterrent than other alternative punishments.

Cost to Handle CA Death Row Cases to Conclusion Estimated at $700 Million

California carried out its last two executions in 2005 and 2006, administering lethal drugs to killers Stanley "Tookie" Williams and Clarence Ray Allen. The executions ended more than two decades of taxpayer-funded legal costs for challenging their convictions and death sentences. Records obtained by the Bay Area News Group shows the final price tag for all the state and federal appeals for Allen, the oldest death row inmate California ever executed, was more than $761,000. Appeals for Crips street gang co-founder Williams, who gained international notoriety on death row, cost the public nearly $1 million.

The debate over such costs is at the heart of California's first political campaign since 1978 to repeal the death penalty, clear the state's bulging death row, and replace capital punishment with life in prison without the possibility of parole. The so-called SAFE California Act is on the November ballot. Death penalty opponents, who in the past have argued executions are unfair and immoral, are now urging voters to think with their wallets, saying the ultimate punishment has become too expensive for deficit-ridden California. Death penalty supporters say overall cost estimates are inflated and no reason to do away with executing the state's most heinous killers. A San Jose Mercury-News review of the Williams and Allen cases -- both considered typical for California's death row -- show the combined state and federal legal costs to see the state's 724 condemned inmates through the nation's most sluggish death penalty system would likely exceed $700 million. That does not include the expense for the attorney general's office to defend those death sentences in the courts.

Florida Court Rejects Sentencing Appeals by 25 Condemned Killers

The Florida Supreme Court on Thursday rejected appeals by 25 men on Death Row who claimed that their lawyers were ineffective in investigating their backgrounds before sentencing, reports the Miami Herald. The rulings were no surprise in the legal community after justices in December issued an opinion rejecting an appeal by a Pinellas County triple murderer who sought to have his death penalty sentence tossed out for the same reason.

Combined, the Miami-Dade men have spent 131 years on Death Row awaiting execution. In Florida, juries in death penalty cases preside over a guilt phase and a separate penalty phase, in which lawyers present evidence about their client’s past and argue why the defendant should not be executed. The men had appealed their convictions after the U.S. Supreme Court in 2010 tossed out the death sentence for George Porter, 80, who was sentenced to execution for the 1986 fatal shootings of his ex-girlfriend and her new boyfriend. The court ruled that Porter’s defense attorney should have investigated his background to prove “mitigating evidence” why the man should be spared.

AZ Governor Overhauls Clemency Board; Longtime Chairman Is Bounced

Gov. Jan Brewer has overhauled Arizona's five-member board that often is the last chance for death-row inmates to seek mercy, reports the Associated Press. The outgoing members have a reputation among prosecutors, defense attorneys and anti-death-penalty advocates for being fair and open-minded, especially its now-former chairman and executive director, Duane Belcher. He had been on the board since 1992 after first being appointed by then-Gov. Fife Symington, a Republican. He was reappointed in 2003 by then-Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat.

Although Belcher reapplied to the board after his term expired, Belcher said the board's nominating committee declined to interview him. "I was told that they were going in a different direction and that I'm not included in that," he said. He was replaced by Jesse Hernandez, utreach and government affairs director for Republican Rep. David Schweikert and founder of the Arizona Latino Republican Association. The other two outgoing board members are Marilyn Wilkens and Ellen Kirschbaum, both appointed to the board in 2010 by Brewer. They are replaced by Brian Livingston, executive director of the Arizona Police Association and a former longtime Phoenix police officer, and Melvin Thomas, former warden of a private Arizona prison that houses inmates convicted of drunken driving.

CT Gov. Ends Capital Punishment; 'Time for Reflection, Not Celebration'

The Hartford Courant reports that Gov. Dannel P. Malloy quietly signed a bill repealing Connecticut's death penalty on Wednesday, ending a practice that has been state policy since a Native American named Napauduck was hanged for murder in 1639. "I signed legislation that will, effective today, replace the death penalty with life in prison without the possibility of release as the highest form of legal punishment in Connecticut,'' Malloy said after a solemn ceremony closed to the press and public. "Although it is an historic moment – Connecticut joins 16 other states and the rest of the industrialized world by taking this action – it is a moment for sober reflection, not celebration."

About 30 guests crowded into the governor's office at the state Capitol to watch him sign the bill, which had cleared both chambers of the General Assembly earlier this month. Among them were members of the clergy, legislative leaders and people who have lost family members to homicide. Capital punishment has been a part of the state's criminal code since Colonial times. In the past 52 years, only two men--Michael Ross, in 2005, and Joseph "Mad Dog" Taborsky, in 1960--have been executed by the state in Connecticut.

AP: 'Secretive Process' Brought Lethal Injection Drugs to Delaware

The Associated Press explains how Delaware managed to obtain a key execution drug through a "complicated and secretive procurement process" that has allowed the state to conduct executions. The process involved a state official with close ties to the pharmaceutical industry and was kept secret from all but a few Department of Correction officials as it unfolded. Even the attorney general was kept out of the loop for much of the process.

The documents offer a behind-the-scenes look at how Delaware officials navigated a procurement process that can be fraught with political and legal consequences. States have been scrambling to find the sedatives needed to carry executions. When the DOC needed to replenish its supply of lethal injection drugs last spring, it turned to a man who spent years cultivating contacts in the pharmaceutical industry: Delaware Economic Development Director Alan Levin. Before Levin's involvement, DOC Commissioner Carl Danberg and his staff had tried other ways of getting execution drugs, including sodium thiopental or pentobarbital, without success. But with a single email, Levin, former head of the Happy Harry's drugstore chain, was able to get the ball rolling, allowing the DOC to get the drugs it needed.

New Signs Show Growing Opposition to Death Penalty in United States

There are new signs that America may be losing its taste for capital punishment, reports USA Today. Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy is poised to sign a bill repealing the death penalty in that state. A separate proposal has qualified for the November ballot in California that would shut down the largest death row in the country and convert inmates' sentences to life without parole. And the National Research concluded last week that there have been no reliable studies to show that capital punishment is a deterrent to homicide.

That study, which does not take a position on capital punishment, follows a Gallup Poll last fall found support for the death penalty had slipped to 61% nationally, the lowest level in 39 years. Even in Texas, which has long projected the harshest face of the U.S. criminal justice system, there has been a marked shift. Last year, the state's 13 executions marked the lowest number in 15 years. And this year, the state — the perennial national leader in executions — is scheduled to carry out 10. Capital punishment proponents say the general decline in death sentences and executions in recent years is merely a reflection of the sustained drop in violent crime, but some lawmakers and legal analysts say the numbers underscore a growing wariness of wrongful convictions.

Californians Will Vote on Death Penalty Abolishment in November

A proposal to abolish capital punishment and replace it with a maximum sentence of life without parole qualified for the Nov. 6 ballot this week, so Californians voters going to the polls in November will again decide the fate of the death penalty, reports the Sacramento Bee. Supporters of the repeal say that capital punishment, which voters added to the state's books in 1978, costs California more than $130 million a year while leading to very few executions because of the time it takes to go through the appeals process.

The measure would apply to the more than 700 inmates currently on death row. The coalition created to oppose the measure, including the California District Attorneys Association, argues that repealing the death penalty would harm public safety. It said in a statement that the problem is "frivolous appeals, endless delays and the ongoing re-victimization of California," not the death penalty itself. Proponents collected 800,000 petition signatures in support of the measure earlier this year. It officially made the cut after a random signature check conducted by counties projected that at least 555,236 of those signatures were valid.

NC Ruling on Race and Death Penalty the Start of 'Honest Discussion'

Writing for The Daily Beast, commentator David R. Dow says last week's landmark ruling on a racist application of the death penalty in North Carolina indicates "we’re finally beginning to have an honest discussion about how we justify legally killing people." In the first invocation of North Carolina's Racial Justice Act, a judge ordered that a death-row inmate’s sentence be reduced to life in prison, after finding that his trial had been so irreversibly tainted by racism that executing him would violate the Constitution.

Twenty-one years ago, Marcus Robinson shot and killed 17-year-old Erik Tornblom. He stole Tornblom’s car and took $27 from his wallet. But Superior Court Judge Gregory Weeks concluded that despite Robinson’s horrendous crime, there was no doubt that racism infected the state’s criminal-justice system—specifically, that prosecutors intentionally kept blacks off of capital juries—and that this same racism presumptively infected Robinson’s trial too. He ruled that even abhorrent crimes do not nullify the Constitution’s guarantee of racial equality.

'Death Before Dishonor': Final Words of DE Condemned Killer

After four years of demanding swift execution, condemned killer Shannon M. Johnson got his wish at 2:55 a.m. Friday when he was put to death in Delaware, reports the News Journal of Wilmington. Johnson, convicted in 2008 of the love-triangle murder of Cameron Hamlin, was executed by lethal injection at Vaughn Correctional Center near Smryna.

In the death chamber, when Warden Perry Phelps asked Johnson if he had last words, the condemned man spoke briefly in a low voice that none of the media witnesses was able to hear. A Department of Correction spokesman quoted the words: “Loyalty is important. Without loyalty you have nothing. Death before dishonor." He then made a statement in Arabic, closed his eyes and never reopened them.