Press Release:

Anti-death penalty activists will converge on Washington, D.C., Tuesday, June 29, through Friday, July 2, for four days of activities commemorating the historic 1972 and 1976 Supreme Court rulings that suspended the death penalty in the United States and later allowed executions to resume. Several programs during the four-day event will specifically address the juvenile death penalty.

June 29 marks the 32nd anniversary of the Furman v. Georgia decision suspending executions, while July 2 marks the 28th anniversary of the Gregg v. Georgia ruling allowing executions to resume. Since Gregg, 915 people have been executed in the United States, with three more executions scheduled to take place June 29 and 30, during the course of the four day protest. This is the eleventh year in a row that the Abolitionist Action Committee has held its annual Fast and Vigil between the dates of these two landmark decisions. Activists, many of whom are fasting the entire four days, are travelling to Washington D.C. from across the United States and beyond.

Highlights of this highly visual and interactive annual event include live music by recording artist Steve Earle, and talks by death row survivors, victims family members, and noted activists. Schedule and details are available here.

by TChris

An execution in Maryland has been delayed so that the condemned man's lawyers will have time to study Maryland's new procedure for administering lethal injections. Lawyers for Steven Oken contend that the procedure does not assure that the person being executed is unconscious before lethal and painful chemicals are introduced into his bloodstream.

U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte ruled officials in Maryland did not allow sufficient time for the condemned man, Steven Oken, and his attorneys to study a new protocol governing execution by lethal injection. ... The judge said Oken and his attorneys should have time to study a new version of the state's Execution Protocol that was amended on May 26 but not made available to the defense team until last Friday.

The procedure was changed after IV lines carrying both the anesthetic and the fatal chemicals leaked during a 1998 execution. Oken argues that the executioners are not proficient at delivering the drugs and that the new procedure is "confused" about the precise quantities of chemicals to use.

The state, ever eager to kill, is appealing the stay of execution.

Update: A Fourth Circuit panel upheld the stay by a vote of 2-1.

by TChris

TalkLeft opposes efforts to reinstate the death penalty in Massachusetts. Here's one reason, from a USA Today editorial entitled "Let Death Penalty Die":

Laurence Adams ...who was sentenced to die in the electric chair in 1974 for the murder of a Boston subway worker, was freed on May 20 after a judge overturned his conviction based on new evidence that cast doubt on his guilt. Adams escaped execution because Massachusetts had abolished capital punishment soon after he was sentenced. His near-death experience exposes capital punishment's fundamental flaw: the risk of killing an innocent person.

The procedural safeguards proposed in Massachussetts (a "no doubt" standard of proof, separate juries for sentencing, requiring scientific corroboration of witness accusations, providing skilled counsel with adequate defense resources) would help correct some of the flaws that threaten the execution of the innocent, and states that insist on a death penalty should give them a close look. As welcome as these safeguards would be, the editorial reminds us that no procedure can assure perfection, and that nothing short of perfection should justify the state's decision to end a life.

There's an important e-mail camaign going on that needs your help. It's sponsored by the North Carolina Moratorium Coaliton. They are asking North Carolinians to e-mail their tate representatives to support a bill that would establish a 2 year moratorium on the death penalty while a comprehensive study is undertaken.

Under the current death penalty law, at least six innocent people have been wrongfully convicted of first-degree murder. You can read four of their stories here.

For Every Six People Executed In North Carolina, One Innocent Person Has Been Removed From Death Row.

North Carolina needs a moratorium. If you're from North Carolina, go over and send an e-mail. Innocent lives may be at stake.

The Supreme Court today ruled death row inmate David Larry Nelson can appeal this death sentence on the ground that lethal injection is cruel and unusal punishment, even though he waited until just three days before his scheduled excectuion to make the claim in a civil rights lawsuit, after his habeas petition had been denied:

On Oct. 6, 2003, three days before his scheduled execution, David Nelson filed the civil rights lawsuit. He claimed his veins have been damaged by years of drug use and challenged as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment the proposed "cut down" procedure that may be used to access his veins. If access to a suitable vein cannot be achieved, prison authorities proposed to have a doctor perform the procedure involving use of a local anesthetic and a two-inch incision to insert the intravenous line that carries the lethal drugs.

TalkLeft's prior coverage of the case and issue is here, here and here. Here's some AP coverage of the oral argument in the Supreme Court. From today's syllabus:

Is the tide changing? A new poll shows that 2/3 of North Carolinians favor a moratorium on the death penalty.

Nearly two-thirds of adults surveyed in a recent poll said that North Carolina should put a two-year moratorium on executions to study its fairness. The survey, commissioned by the North Carolina Council of Churches, also found majority support in nearly every demographic group examined, including men (64 percent to 30 percent), Republicans (55 percent to 39 percent) and those who said they favored the death penalty (59 percent to 35 percent).

by TChris

Principles come with a price. When Kamala Harris ran for district attorney in San Francisco, she promised she would never seek the death penalty. Now some of her supporters have abandoned her because she intends to keep that promise.

Harris isn't seeking the death penalty for David Hill, a 21-year-old accused of killing a police officer. Some of the police unions that endorsed Harris during her campaign -- apparently not realizing that her campaign pledge applied to all defendants, including those accused of killing cops -- have asked California's attorney general to take over the case and to pursue Hill's execution.

Harris might expect to find some support from other politicians (who should know how important it is to keep campaign promises) but it's rare to find a politician who doesn't want to jump on the death bandwagon in a high pofile case involving a sympathetic victim. Sen. Dianne Feinstein says she might not have endorsed Harris if she knew that Harris' pledge didn't make an exception for cop killers. In Feinstein's mind, it seems, the victim's occupation should determine whether his murderer is executed. Sen. Barbara Boxer has asked federal prosecutors to step in.

Even death-happy John Ashcroft is unlikely to order federal intervention in a case lacking an obvious federal interest. Nor is the California attorney general's office likely to intrude in a local prosecution without being invited by the local prosecutor. The decision belongs to Harris; it's the kind of decision voters elected her to make. Harris will continue to face criticism for standing up for her principles, but her principles got her elected. She shouldn't abandon them -- or the people who voted for her -- to silence the complaints of pro-death forces.

by TChris

Will Texas Gov. Rick Perry follow the lead of Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry by sparing the life of a man who wasn't given access to his government's consulate after his arrest, as the Vienna Convention requires? The government of Honduras wants Texas Gov. Rick Perry to commute the death sentences of two Hondurans who were denied their right to help from consular officials at the time of their arrest.

Gov. Perry recently pardoned Josiah Sutton, but DNA evidence established Sutton's innocence. Shortly after the International Court of Justice asked the United States to review the death setnences imposed on 51 Mexicans who were denied access to their consulates, Perry said that the court had no jurisdiction in Texas. Although his spokesperson denies that he's changed his view, she says that Perry expects law enforcement officials to obey all laws, including the Vienna Convention's requirement of consular notification, and promises that he "will continue to review death penalty cases on an individual basis as they reach his desk and look at the individual merits in each case in making a determination." Whether Gov. Perry will conclude that the failure to comply with the Vienna Convention affects the "individual merits" of either case remains to be seen.

If Gov. Perry follows the lead of Gov. Henry, it's likely that the Hondurans won't be the only inmates saved from execution. There are 26 foreign nationals on death row in Texas.

by TChris

As Talkleft noted a few days ago, the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board recommended clemency for Osbaldo Torres, whose pending execution violates the Vienna Convention according to the Mexican government and the International Court of Justice. Clemency would provide assurance that Torres won't be killed, but Torres' life might be spared even if the Governor rejects his clemency request.

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals stayed Torres' execution indefinitely while it considers whether the death sentence violates international law because Torres wasn't given access to the Mexican consulate after his arrest. The court ordered an evidentiary hearing on that issue within 60 days.

The Governor is likely to let the court system do its thing before he acts on Torres' clemency request. If the court invalidates the death sentence, the clemency request becomes moot and the Governor doesn't risk taking political heat by granting or denying the request. He has no incentive to decide a question that the courts might decide for him.

UPDATE: Wrong again. Rather than waiting, Governor Brad Henry had the courage to commute Torres' sentence to life imprisonment.

by TChris

Speaking before the Seventh Circuit Bar Association, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said Monday: "I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment." He asked states to "really consider whether they think the benefits outweigh the very serious potential injustice, because in these cases the emotions are very, very high on both sides and to have stakes as high as you do in these cases, there is the special potential for error."

Stevens' statement ... appears to be the most pronounced statement against capital punishment made by a Supreme Court justice since the late Harry Blackmun wrote in 1994: "From this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death."

by TChris

Mexico has long maintained that Mexicans who commit crimes in the United States should not be executed when the U.S. failed to notify them of their right to request assistance from the Mexican consul, as the Vienna Convention requires. A recent ruling from the United Nations International Court of Justice supports that claim.

Mexico pressed its position before the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board today in the case of Osbaldo Torres. Torres is scheduled to die on May 18. In a rare victory for international relations, however, the Board recommended clemency for Torres. His fate is now in the hands of Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry.

North Carolina is having a death penalty crisis. The state bar association reports that of the state's 190 death row inmates, more than 35 were represented by lawyers who were disciplined or disbarred. Two wrongfully convicted men were recently released from death row. There is a growing support for two-year moratorium on executions.

TChris wrote about this a few days ago here and here.

Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, recently made these remarks.

The death penalty is really about 98 percent political," Prejean said during a visit to Salem College. "A moratorium is a graceful way for politicians to get out of the death penalty."....The United States is unique among death-penalty countries in that it justifies the practice by saying it is carried out to honor the victims, Prejean said. If that were true, then most families of victims are being ignored because only a small percentage of murderers end up on death row, she said. "It's a political ploy," said Prejean....

The vast majority of executions in the United States are carried out in states that had long ties to slavery, and often involve poor black defendants and white victims, she told an audience of more than 500 people at Salem College last night.

She said the school's religion department should have a course titled "God Is Sneaky," because so much of what she has learned over the years about social justice, civil rights and death row came to her in experiences she was not looking for and was unprepared to handle....I feel really bad for the victims' families," she said. "But what we have is a culture that tells them the way to honor their family member is by sitting on the front row and watching the execution. It's a culture of vengeance.

Want to weigh in? Go over to 2000 Moratorium Org.