Ohio Death Penalty Information

WTVG-TV Toledo reporter Erica Hurtt had an interview with John Spirko on its 6 PM local newscast.  Online streaming video of the interview should be available eventually at this link (perhaps not until after a late news broadcast of the interview).  Station blurb on the report is here.

Ic Scotland has this story on the heart procedure undergone by Kenny Richey.  BBC has this article, entitled "Health concern for death row Scot."

KENNY RICHEY HOSPITALIZED:  Kenny Richey was hospitalized on Friday after experiencing chest pains, and underwent an angioplasty procedure and stent emplacement over the weekend. He is doing well according to prison officials.  Not clear if he is still hospitalized.  The Scotsman.com will be publishing something about it later today or tomorrow. 

Hopefully, they didn't let any of the death row docs work on him!

The Toledo Blade has this editorial, entitled "A just, if belated, verdict," noting the outcome of the Andrea Yates case (but making no mention of the outcome of the Michael Luebrecht case it covered in its Sunday edition - earlier post here).

AP has this story on how "hot-button" issues are expected to shape voter behavior in the 2006 election campaigns in Ohio and elsewhere.

Excerpt:

"The reason the right wing can speak out more strongly is that people in their churches are already in their ideological bent. They don't have to worry about losing customers, so to speak, where mainline churches know they could lose 20 or 30 percent of their members if they take a stand one way or another on some of these issues," [Ohio Council of Churches lobbyist Tom] Smith said.

...A survey released last year by the nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization Public Agenda found that religious Americans were less likely to support compromise on these issues in 2004 than they had been in 2000.

"There's a growing acceptance of religion in politics and the idea that political leaders should stay true to their religious ideals in their politics. That acceptance is carrying out to the local races as well," said spokesman Michael Hamill Remaley. "The majority still say that leaders should compromise in general on the host of issues we talked about - abortion, gay rights, the death penalty, poverty - but what we found, though, was a slimming down of that majority."

Hoover believes that trend is fueled by fear.

"They scare people with these hot-button issues. Whether you care a lot about one of those issues is not really the point," she said. "If I can make you be afraid of one of these issues - they're going to take your guns away, or gay marriage is going to be everywhere - then I can guide your vote. It's always about fear."

Andrew Welsh-Huggins has this AP story, entitled "Incompetent lawyers chief reason for overturned death sentences," on the high incidence of Ohio death sentences overturned in the US 6th Circuit Ct of Appeals based on ineffective assistance of counsel claims.

The Toledo Blade has this article, entitled "Woman stands by spouse who drowned tot in bathtub; Putnam Co. man needs help, not hard time, she says," on the Michael Luebrecht case.  (In a case bearing a striking resemblence to the Andrea Yates case, Luebrecht was sentenced to life in prison in March after accepting a plea offer to avoid the death penalty, after weighing the difficulty of mounting a successful insanity defense under current law.)

Morris B. Hoffman and Stephen J. Morse have this op-ed in today's New York Times, entitled "The Insanity Defense Goes Back on Trial,"

Excerpt:
Punishing the deserving wrongdoers among us — those who intentionally violate the criminal law and are cognitively unimpaired — takes people seriously as moral agents and lies at the heart of what being civilized is all about. But being civilized also means not punishing those whom we deem morally impaired by mental disorder. Convicting and punishing a defendant who genuinely believed that God commanded him to kill is not unscientific, it is immoral and unjust.

We should be skeptical about claims of non-responsibility. But, if insanity-defense tests are interpreted sensibly to excuse people who genuinely lacked the ability to reason morally at the time of the crime, and expert testimony is treated with appropriate caution, the criminal justice system can reasonably decide whom to blame and punish.

Wrong insanity verdicts are possible, of course, but wrong verdicts are always possible. We should not respond by abandoning a defense that justice requires. A sensible test for legal insanity, fairly applied, can help prevent the concept of the responsible person from disappearing, either because the law naïvely accepts a cacophony of untestable excuses, or because cynical legislators overreact by permitting the conviction and punishment of blameless defendants.

(Earlier post on Andrea Yates insanity verdict here.)

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch has this article, entitled "Behind the mask of the Mo. execution doctor."

Excerpt:

The Post-Dispatch has confirmed the man behind the screen was Dr. Alan R. Doerhoff, 62, of Jefferson City. Two Missouri hospitals won’t allow him to practice within their walls. He has been sued for malpractice more than 20 times, by his own estimate, and was publicly reprimanded in 2003 by the state Board of Healing Arts for failing to disclose malpractice suits to a hospital where he was treating patients.

It is unclear how much U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. was told before he strongly questioned the doctor’s qualifications — and whether Missouri was delivering unconstitutionally cruel punishment in its death chamber.

Doerhoff’s reprimand was no secret to Attorney General Jay Nixon’s office. Nixon’s office, which fought to keep Doerhoff’s identity a secret in death penalty appeals, signed off on the discipline.

From 2000 to 2004, the board doled out the same or worse discipline to only 2 percent of the state’s practicing physicians. 

The Nebraska Supreme Court has rejected (on procedural grounds) a challenge to the use of the electric chair as the sole means of execution in that state.  AP has this.  Opinion is here (11-page pdf)

The Delaware News Journal has this editorial, entitled "Death penalty's costly delays demean justice."  (Earlier post on the halt to executions in DE ordered by US District Ct Judge Sue Robinson on Tuesday is here.)