Ohio Death Penalty Information

Unusual voices state concerns over lethal injection:  Elizabeth Cohen has this story on the CNN website, entitled "Lethal injection creator: Maybe it's time to change formula."

Excerpt:
When Gary Gilmore was choosing between the firing squad and the electric chair in 1977, Dr. Jay Chapman remembers discussing the inhumanity of each option with his colleagues at the Oklahoma state medical examiner's office.

"We said this is really ridiculous. We kill animals more humanely than we kill people," said Chapman.

But Chapman, then the chief medical examiner in Oklahoma, supported the death penalty. So when state legislators asked him to come up with a more humane alternative, he went to work.

For three weeks Dr. Chapman contemplated the best way to kill someone, the best combination of drugs that when injected, would take life swiftly and painlessly.

He came up with a lethal three-drug cocktail, and to his great surprise, over the past 25 years, 37 states adopted it nearly to the letter. But now, after concerns that instead of causing an instant death it sometimes provides a slow, painful, one, Chapman has rethought whether his formula is optimal.

"It may be time to change it," Chapman said in a recent interview. "There are many problems that can arise ... given the concerns people are raising with the protocol it should be re-examined."

...Even proponents of the death penalty say they have doubts about whether the three-drug formula is the best way to execute someone. "I think it's a dumb way to do it," said Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a group that advocates the death penalty. "It's a complicated procedure, and open to criticism."

Instead, Rushford said he supports using carbon monoxide, which he described as being "simple, fast, and painless."

Chapman disagreed with that assessment. But he had another idea. "The simplest thing I know of is the guillotine. And I'm not at all opposed to bringing it back. The person's head is cut off and that's the end of it."

(Some other unusual voices on lethal injection here.)

US Supreme Court agrees to hear Jose Medellin case for 2nd time:  Mark Sherman has this AP report, entitled "Court Takes Mexican Death Penalty Case," on the US Supreme Court's decision today to hear the case of Texas death row inmate Jose Medellin, a Mexican national.  The court will address one or more of the issues of 1) whether failure to inform Medellin of his right to inform the Mexican consulate of his detention at the time of his arrest (a violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations) should be cause for relief for Medellin; 2) whether such right was defaulted on by not being raised at trial; 3) whether a US federal court is bound by the Vienna Convention in accord with a 2004 ruling to that effect by the International Court of Criminal Justice; and 4) whether President Bush has the authority order Texas courts to follow the particular Vienna Convention article involved in the case (while also declaring that US courts are not bound by International Court of Criminal Justice rulings).  (The court previously agreed to hear the Medellin case in 2005, but dismissed it after a new appeal was filed by Medellin in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals raising substantially the same issues.  After the Texas court denied relief, Medellin's attorneys refiled a new cert. application with the US Supreme Court.)

• The Death Penalty Information Center has some data and background on the issue of foreign nationals on death row in the U.S here.
• The International Justice Project website has more background on the Medellin case here.

Urban/rural realities and Ohio criminal sentencing:  Jack Palmer has this article in the Defiance Crescent-News, entitled "Felony sentencing philosophy reflects community values," with the views of three rural-Ohio common pleas court judges toward sentencing in their communities, and noting that while more felony convictions result in jail sentences in rural counties than in urban ones, far fewer death sentences are sought and handed down in rural counties.

Excerpt:
...As of March 30, there were 190 Ohio prison inmates sentenced to death for convictions of aggravated murder. Hamilton County (Cincinnati) has the most with 38, followed closely by Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) with 31.

After that there's a significant drop-off to third place Lucas County (Toledo) with 14 and fourth place Franklin County (Columbus) with 12. The remainder of the top 10 counties are Trumbull (Warren), nine; Summit (Akron), nine; Montgomery (Dayton), seven; Mahoning (Youngstown), seven; Lorain (Elyria), seven; and Butler (Hamilton), six.

Of the 88 counties, 49 have no death-row inmates and 17 others have just one. The only death-row inmate in the six-county area (Defiance, Henry, Paulding, Fulton, Putnam and Williams) is Kenneth Richey from Putnam County, convicted in 1986.

"It's a very expensive proposition to take a capital case to trial from start to finish," said [Paulding County Judge J. David] Webb. "You're probably talking as much as $100,000 in counsel fees and expenses."

"Prosecutors often sit down with the victim's family and explain the realities of going to trial and the possible result," added [Henry County Judge Keith] Muehlfeld. "One reality is that there isn't much difference from their own healing standpoint between a defendant receiving the death penalty vs. life in prison without the possibility of parole. The way the system is now, the defendant may be on death row for 20 or 25 years before the sentence is carried out." ...

Scotland TV interview with Kenny Richey:  Scotland TV (STV.tv) marks the start of Ohio death row inmate Kenny Richey's 21st year on Ohio's death row with an exlusive interview (and video clip) here.

Intro:

Death Row Scot Kenny Richey says he believes he will be executed or be back home in Scotland a free man by the summer. He has been locked up 23 hours a day, seven days a week for the last 20 years for a crime he insists he did not commit after he was jailed for murdering a two-year-old girl.

stv was given access to Richey as he prepares to start his 21st year behind bars. ...

Some calls for a closer look at Tennessee's death penalty: 

• The Nashville Tennessean has this editorial, entitled "Range of problems call for complete review in Tennessee."

Excerpt:
As Gov. Phil Bredesen's moratorium on executions nears an end, there are indications that the state of Tennessee is not prepared to carry out the death penalty according to legal guidelines or constitutional guarantees.

Bredesen imposed a 90-day suspension in February, just as four inmates' executions were coming due. The governor pointed to a number of problems with the state's guidelines for putting people to death; among them, procedures that did not detail standard dosages for the three chemicals used during a lethal injection.

An analysis of executions in California and North Carolina released last week found that two of the three drugs used in lethal injection were not administered in those states in a way that reliably results in painless death. Some of the inmates died of suffocation and were conscious enough to realize it, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Such errors run afoul of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. The problems found in California and North Carolina are remarkably similar to the concerns that led to a moratorium in Tennessee.

But that is only the beginning of Tennessee's problems, according to the American Bar Association. The organization issued a report on the state's death-penalty system last week, authored by seven Tennessee lawyers, which cited poor legal representation for the accused, crushing caseloads for the handful of good defense lawyers, and the likelihood that some death-penalty cases have been tainted by racial discrimination. ...

• Karen J. Mathis, president of the American Bar Association, and Dwight L. Aarons, a Univ. of Tennessee law professor and chair of the Tennessee Death Penalty Assessment Team, have this op-ed in the Tennessean, entitled "Halt the executions until problems fixed."

Excerpt:

Like many people in the United States, voters in Tennessee believe in the death penalty in concept but have reservations about how it is applied in practice.

In a February survey conducted for the American Bar Association, 68 percent of Tennessee voters said they support the death penalty. But 65 percent of those same voters said they would support a temporary halt in executions to allow the state to analyze how the legal system imposes death sentences, identify problems and correct them.

They're right to be concerned.

Last week, experts from Tennessee's own legal community, seven people with varying views of capital punishment, released the findings of a three-year study of Tennessee death penalty jurisprudence. The team is unified in its assessment that Tennessee's death-penalty system falls far short of providing fair and accurate procedures for each defendant. ...

(Earlier post on the Philip Workman execution scheduled for May 8 is here.)

Boston Globe editorial on recent PLoS study on lethal injection: The Boston Globe has this editorial, entitled "Lethal injection, revealed."

Excerpt:
Though nearly all industrial democracies have abolished the death penalty, it survives in the United States, in part because the states where it is legal have sought to make it antiseptic. The era of public hangings is long over, replaced in America by an impersonal, well-guarded process that minimizes discomfort for the executioners and the public. But this decades-long effort to make executions seem merely clinical -- culminating in the rise of lethal injection as the dominant method of execution -- does not mean that prisoners are being put to death in a humane manner.

Indeed, a new analysis of executions in California and North Carolina suggests the opposite. Published in PLoS Medicine, a peer-reviewed medical journal from the Public Library of Science, it indicates that the three-drug combination generally used in lethal injections can result in a painful process of asphyxiation, during which a prisoner may be conscious. That possibility is heightened when technicians bungle the procedure. The study strips away the medical veneer and offers strong evidence that lethal injection violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. ...

(Earlier coverage here and here.)

Debate over Carey Dean Moore electrocution scheduled for May 8:  Nate Jenkins has this AP report, entitled "Talk that Inmate's Heart Could Beat after Jolt Enters Debate Over Nebraska's Electric Chair."

Excerpt:
The state's new method of electrocution - a single, sustained jolt instead of several shorter ones - could leave the condemned's heart beating well after the shock, backers and foes of the protocol say.

The macabre image of a strapped-down inmate, possibly brain dead but with a pulsating heart, could sharpen an already tense debate as Nebraska, the only state with the electric chair as its sole means of execution, prepares to put to death its first prisoner in a decade.

No one's sure the inmate's heart would continue to beat after the current stopped, but the possibility has caused a furor among capital punishment opponents since it was broached by the doctor who almost single-handedly revised Nebraska's execution protocol.

Carey Dean Moore is to die May 8 through an untested system of sending 2,450 volts through his body for 20 seconds.

...[Dr. Ronald K.] Wright has argued that because the inmate will be brain dead, he won't feel pain.

Wright, the chief medical examiner in Broward County, Florida, from 1980 to 1994, did not return messages seeking comment.

...Settling on a protocol that works in electric chairs has been a problem for decades and may be more difficult now because they are more uncommon and not easily tested, and credible doctors and engineers tend to avoid them, said Deborah Denno, a professor at the Fordham University School of Law.

'We trust what the departments of corrections do,' said Denno, who has studied executions extensively. 'But nobody really knows very much about executions by electrocution.'...

(Website of Ronald K. Wright, MD, JD, author of Nebraka's new electrocution protocol (listed at the end of the AP article) is here.)

More on Filiaggi execution:  Brad Dicken has this article in the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram, entitled "The scene: Witnessing Filiaggi's final moments," with a more details of the execution of James Filiaggi.

John Gillard seeks DNA testing:  Paul Kotsyu has this article in the Canton Repository, entitled "Death-row convict's attorneys ask state to conducts DNA tests."

Excerpt:
In an attempt to exonerate their client of two Canton murders and the shooting of a third person in 1985, attorneys for John Gillard formally requested the Ohio attorney general to conduct DNA testing.

Randall Porter of the Ohio public defender's office said the blood found on the clothing of William Gillard, John's brother, "is consistent with the blood of all three victims."

The request, which was filed in Stark County Common Pleas Court on Friday, comes in the aftermath of a decision earlier this week by the U.S. Supreme Court that ended John Gillard's appeals to have his conviction overturned.

That could mean the Ohio Supreme Court will set an execution date for Gillard this year. ...

 

(Earlier coverage here.)

A Shout From the Rooftop: NCADP report documents four cases of wrongful execution

The National Coalition Against the Death Penalty has issued a new groundbreaking report documenting in detail four "mistaken" executions - those of Larry Griffin in Missouri, and Carlos De Luna, Ruben Cantu, and Cameron Todd Willingham in Texas.  The NCADP has also launched a new website in conjunction with the release of the report.

Excerpt from report intro, entitled "Shouting from the Rooftops":
We've believed it for years. With at least 123 people freed from death row after evidence of their innocence emerged, it seemed inevitable that one day, news of an execution of an innocent person would emerge. For many years, however, our strong suspicion that innocent people have been executed has been no more than that - simply a strong suspicion. Once an execution occurs, there historically has been little opportunity to reflect on what has transpired. Overburdened attorneys and advocates have always moved to stop the next execution, knowing that the line is growing and hard choices in favor of the living must be made. Research and fact-finding take time and resources. Officials and wrongdoers who control the crucial evidence and have long hidden or stubbornly ignored the truth continue doing so.

Death penalty supporters maintain "the system works" and that no innocent person has been proven to be executed. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia recently 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."  ...

• Full report is here (7-page pdf).
• Link to summary and introduction, with additional links to documentation in all four cases, is on the new "Innocent and Executed" website here.