The death penalty is always inhumane, and the past few days in Texas have brought to light some of its most worrisome aspects.

On Wednesday, The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommended that Robert Thompson’s death sentence for his role in a 1996 robbery and shooting be commuted to life imprisonment. The shooter, Sammy Butler, was convicted and received life in prison, which raises serious questions about the arbitrary nature of how the death penalty works in real life. Why wait until the last minute to discuss the disproportionality of sentencing the accomplice to death while the man who pulled the trigger is sentenced to life in prison?

Earlier this week a federal judge in Houston granted a last-minute stay to Gerald Eldridge, allowing 90 days for a review of his mental state and capacity. Executing the mentally ill is extremely problematic, and the time to deal with such a serious issue is not during a prisoner’s last meal. Such jarring, nerve-wracking changes at the last second are traumatic for everyone involved, including the victims’ families.

Also this week, Danielle Simpson requested that his sentence be commuted to life in prison or that he be given a  180-day reprieve to appeal his case. Frustrated with life behind bars, Simpson had previously stated that he did not want to wait around to be executed, and so was considered a “volunteer.” Despite the alarming injustice of denying someone who has given up on appealing a death sentence a chance to reconsider, and despite claims that he suffered from “debilitating mental illness,” his requests were denied and Simpson was executed Wednesday evening. He thus became the 29th “volunteer” Texas has executed (around 6 and a half percent of all Texas executions), and the 134th “volunteer” executed in the US since the resumption of executions in 1977 (representing over 11 % of all executions).

As the week draws to a close, all eyes will be on Texas Governor Rick Perry as he decides the fate of Robert Thompson. Please contact Governor Perry and urge him to follow the advice of Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles by commuting Thompson’s sentence to life in prison.

UPDATE:  Governor Perry rejected the recommendation of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, and the execution of Robert Thompson was carried out as scheduled.

Caught between a legal requirement to avoid cruelty, and its desire to kill prisoners, the state of Ohio is struggling to find an acceptable method of execution following the botched, and failed, attempt to put Romell Broom to death on September 15.  As reported in today’s New York Times, the method the state has chosen is injection into the vein of a single, lethal dose of anesthetic.  This seems peculiar, since it was failure to find a suitable vein that led to the botched executions of Joseph Clark and Christopher Newton, as well as the recent Broom fiasco.

In the new Ohio protocol, another alternative, intramuscular injection, is available as a backup.  This method has not been used before, but was given the thumbs up by Massachusetts anesthesiologist Dr. Mark Dershwitz, the one doctor in America who seems willing to help states kill prisoners.  A local Ohio doctor, Jonathan Groner, seems to disagree, suggesting that legal challenges are far from over.  “In the end this is still about killing people.”

It is indeed, and if this protocol proves acceptable to Ohio and federal courts, the lethal injection of Kenneth Biros and others could be back on schedule (the stay of Biros’ December 8 date is only temporary), and Ohio’s one-a-month assembly line of executions could be back in business.

UPDATE:  Virginia Governor Tim Kaine has denied John Muhammad’s request for clemency.

This evening Texas and Virginia, the two most prolific executing states in the USA, are both slated to carry out lethal injections.  Texas has scheduled an execution for Yosvanis Valle – a Cuban national – while Virginia is preparing to put to death John Allen Muhammad, known by most simply as the “DC sniper”.  The crimes for which John Muhammad is known inflicted serious trauma not just on the victims  and their families but on the entire Washington DC area.

But we at Amnesty International oppose the death penalty in all cases without exception.  Like torture, the deliberate killing of prisoners is a fundamental violation of human rights.  No human being, no matter how unsympathetic or how heinous the crimes for which he has been convicted, should ever be subjected to the kind of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment that both torture and executions represent.  There are lines that we as a society should simply not cross, or lines that we should not cede to our governments the power to cross.  And there have to be better ways to respond to traumatic crimes than with violations of basic human rights.

Beyond these human rights concerns, there are some other issues that make the execution of John Muhammad problematic.  Evidence of severe mental illness was not presented to the jury during the sentencing phase of his trial.  Virginia Governor Tim Kaine has been presented with this evidence and could still recommend clemency on that basis. 

If both these execution do proceed as scheduled, they will be the 44th and 45th executions in the country this year.  Yet also this year, 9 men have been exonerated from US death rows.  That means that for every 5 people executed, one person has been found innocent of the crime for which he was sentenced to die.  That’s a spectacular failure rate for a system that employs an irreversible punishment.  This year also saw the revelation that in 2004 Texas executed Cameron Todd Willingham for setting a fire that, as it turns out, was probably not arson at all.  The fact is, as long as our criminal justice system is run by fallible human beings, mistakes will continue to be made, and along with punishing the guilty and the “worst of the worst”, we will also be sentencing to death, and occasionally even executing, the innocent.

In a recent interview on NPR, former Texas Governor Mark White discussed his lack of faith in the ability of the legal system to reliably handle death penalty cases, and emphasized the seriousness of handing down an irreversible sentence to a person who may later be proven innocent. While he was Governor, he oversaw a significant number of executions, but White now believes that: ”What I see in retrospect is that our system is not as foolproof as I think it should be in order to carry out a punishment that’s irreversible.”

White also stated that he has never believed in the death penalty as a deterrent, because: “Obviously, with 400 people on death row, there’s at least 400 people up there that didn’t deter.”

As Amnesty International observed, Governor White’s evolution on this question is part of a national trend: “As advances in DNA and forensic science have revealed the extent to which our criminal justice system is prone to error, judges, jurors, the public, and even some politicians, have begun to question the wisdom of resorting to capital punishment.”

White’s statements (he’s a Democrat) also come at a particularly bad time for current Governor Rick Perry, who, in the middle of a re-election campaign, is now being scrutinized for his role in the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham, who appears to have been innocent and wrongly put to death.

In the past, you would only pay a political price if you didn’t support the death penalty strongly enough.  But in Texas, as everywhere else in the U.S., times have changed, and it would be quite something if the most prolific executing Governor in modern history wound up suffering politically because he supported the death penalty too much.

Health professionals confirm death in 1998 Guatemala execution. (c) Jorge Uzon

Ohio’s botched and failed execution of Romell Broom, which has led to the postponement of all the Buckeye State’s execution plans – at least for this year – has created another problem for the state.  It seems that when you are doing something morally repugnant, like putting a human being to death with lethal chemicals, those with ethics don’t want to help you.  So, as Ohio looks for ways to improve its ability to kill prisoners without embarrassing mishaps, it is not surprising that they are having a hard time finding a respectable member of the medical profession who is willing to help them.  Killing someone, it seems, is somewhat of a violation of the whole “do no harm” code of ethics to which health professionals are bound.

According to an AP report, on Friday, Ohio’s Attorney General Richard Cordray filed a brief with a federal District Court explaining that “ethical and professional considerations are deterring doctors and others from offering advice about lethal injection.”

Apparently, due to this difficulty, Ohio now has judges, police and lawmakers helping to find some medical professionals who are willing to take their ethical obligations less seriously and give the state the help it needs to resume killing.

Meanwhile, there is nothing to prevent us from continuing to offer our own – albeit unsolicited – advice, that the best way for Ohio to avoid these moral quandaries it to simply stop executions.

The Death Penalty Information Center released a new study today on the high costs, and lack of real benefits, associated with capital punishment in the United States.  The report, called Smart on Crime:  Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis, also includes the results of a poll of 500 randomly selected U.S. police chiefs who by a more than 2 to 1 margin reject the idea that the death penalty is a deterrent (an assessment confirmed by criminologists),  and, also by a greater than 2 to 1 margin, believe that the death penalty is used as a tough-on-crime symbol by politicians. 

“Greater use of the death penalty” was listed as the best way to reduce violent crime by only 1% (that’s one percent) of the chiefs surveyed, and only 2% (3% in the South) believed that “insufficient use of the death penalty” interferes with effective law enforcement.

And use of the death penalty is declining anyway.  For almost a decade the numbers of death sentences and executions have continued to drop.  As Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, told CNN “…the death penalty is turning into an expensive form of life without parole.”

Given the current economic crisis, which is hitting state budgets very hard (see pages 12-13 of the report for examples), maintaining a system that doesn’t work, is used less and less,  and yet still costs a fortune is difficult to justify.  As the report observes: “The money spent to preserve this failing system could be directed to effective programs that make society safer.”  In the poll, the police chiefs chose expanded training for officers, community policing, drug and alcohol abuse programs, and neighborhood watch programs all as better uses of limited criminal justice resources.

The death penalty is a grave human rights abuse, a cruel and degrading punishment.  But, for those who don’t see it that way, shouldn’t we listen to law enforcement and focus our taxpayer dollars on real public safety measures?

Wednesday, Oct. 14, radio host Tom Joyner became the first person to obtain a posthumous pardon for unjust executions in South Carolina.  South Carolina is a typical gung-ho executing Southern state, so this achievement was no small feat.  Joyner obtained the pardon on behalf of two great uncles, Thomas and Meeks Griffin, who in 1915 were wrongfully put to death for the 1913 murder of a white Civil War veteran in Blackstock, SC.  Joyner only found out about this tragic episode because of his participation in African American Lives 2, a 2006 PBS show that traced the ancestries of prominent African Americans.

While Joyner was understandably shocked and motivated to action by this revelation of his family history, the story of what happened in South Carolina 94 years ago is eerily familiar to what goes on in capital punishment in America today.  Certainly, wrongful death sentences and executions (as the Cameron Todd Willingham case definitively demonstrates) are still with us.  The Griffin brothers were framed for the murder by the actual killer, as was the case in John Grisham’s non-fiction study The Innocent Man, and as seems likely to have been the case with Troy Davis. And, as is the case today, legal costs were devastating; the Griffins had to sell off their considerable land holdings (130 acres) to pay for their lawyer.

Of course there are important differences. With the judge’s approval, the trial began just two days after the indictment, a practice that would never occur today, and which made organizing an effective defense impossible.  Appeals courts failed to address this fundamental injustice.  But, as often happens today, a petition campaign to save the lives of the Griffin brothers was organized, as doubts about their guilt began to surface.  According to the AP story cited above: 

“More than 120 people signed a petition asking then-Gov. Richard Manning to commute the men’s sentence, including Blackstock’s mayor, a former sheriff, two trial jurors and the grand jury foreman.”

This multiracial effort was to no avail as the Governor, though he delayed, ultimately approved the executions.  Those of us who follow the death penalty know that low expectations for executive clemency have changed little in the intervening 90+ years.

Which makes one wonder; what cases today, on which our current crop of governors and judges fail to take action, will draw posthumous pardons 90+ years from now, as the 21st century draws to a close.

(c) Scott Langley

An important hearing was supposed to take place in Texas today, but on Wednesday, September 30, Texas Governor Rick Perry abruptly replaced three members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission that is currently reviewing the fire investigation that led to the 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham.  The Governor took this action two days before the Commission was scheduled to hear live testimony from Craig Beyler, a nationally respected fire expert whose recent report criticized the original investigation of the fire that killed Willingham’s three children as having “nothing to do with science-based fire investigation.”

That hearing, scheduled for today, has now been postponed, and the chair of the Commission, a defense lawyer from Austin, Sam Bassett, has been replaced by politically-connected, tough-on-crime prosecutor John Bradley.  More than a few eyebrows have been raised by Governor Perry’s sudden move.  Barry Scheck of the Innocence Project,  which also conducted a review of Willingham’s case and determined that he was innocent of the crime for which he was executed, called Perry’s actions a “Saturday Night Massacre,” drawing an analogy with President Nixon’s famous firing of the special prosecutor who was investigating the Watergate scandal. 

For his part, Governor Perry said that his actions were simply “business as usual” … the terms of the three Commission members he removed had expired, so they were replaced.  Of course, this occurred two days before the Commission’s hearing, and there is no reason Governor Perry could not have simply reappointed those Commission members so that they could finish their important work. 

Governor Perry (and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles) signed off on Willingham’s execution back in 2004, despite having in hand a report challenging the fire investigations as “junk science,” and the Governor has publicly challenged Beyler’s credibility, referring to him and others who have looked at the case as “supposed experts.” What Governor Perry’s expertise is in the area of forensic fire science is unclear.

What is clear is that, whatever the Governor’s motives, if his actions lead to another white-washing of a dubious conviction and death sentence (and, in this case, execution), then that will indeed be “business as usual” in Texas.

The death penalty is always inhumane, but Ohio’s failed attempt to execute Romell Broom on September 15th was particularly disturbing.  During the two-hour ordeal the execution team repeatedly attempted and failed to find a useable vein in which to insert the lethal injection needle, and eventually had to give up.  Mr. Broom’s execution has been stayed, but Lawrence Reynolds, Darryl Durr, and Kenneth Biros are still scheduled to be put to death before the end of this year. Mr. Reynolds lawyers have filed for a stay of execution, pointing out that this latest failed execution attempt is further evidence of “a pattern of serious problems with the administration of lethal injection in Ohio.”  While the victims of these crimes and their families always suffer greatly, the perpetuation of violence through the death penalty is never the most constructive way to handle such tragedies.

Unfortunately, this situation is not unique; in Ohio alone there have been at least two other poorly handled executions over the last three years. In May of 2006, it took the Ohio execution team nearly half an hour to find a useable vein in condemned prisoner Joseph Clark’s arm, and then that vein collapsed, causing Clark’s arm to swell. The witnesses reported hearing “moaning, crying out and guttural noises” coming from behind the curtain while the execution team continued to try for 30 more minutes to find another vein. It wasn’t until an hour and a half after the execution began that Joseph Clark was pronounced dead.

In 2007 another execution team in Ohio struggled to find useable veins in condemned prisoner, this time Christopher Newton. It was again a prolonged ordeal, and Mr. Newton was not declared dead until nearly two hours after the execution process began.
 
Ohio state officials still have no contingency plan for these kinds of situations, and they are not addressed in the state’s lethal injection protocol. Because of this clear evidence that the state of Ohio has serious problems administering lethal injections, please tell Ohio Governor Ted Strickland to stop executions from being carried out in his state.

Today is Constitution Day.  On this day, September 17, in 1787, the US Constitution was signed by a group of men known collectively these days as the “Founding Fathers”.  Yesterday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) celebrated a day early by denying relief to Charles Dean Hood despite the fact that the judge and prosecutor were sleeping together during his trial. 

Charles Dean Hood received a death sentence in 1990 in Collin Country, Texas for the murders of Ronald Williamson and Tracie Lynn Wallace.  The Honorable Verla Sue Holland served as the judge during his trial while Thomas O’Connel—Collin County’s District Attorney—was the leading prosecutor on the case.  Last year O’Connel and Holland revealed that they had maintained a clandestine sexual affair for a long period of time.  Their relationship coincided with Charles Hood’s trial. 

The affair was first uncovered last June, two weeks before Hood’s scheduled execution, when a Collin County assistant district attorney revealed it in an affidavit.  The affair was subsequently confirmed by O’Connel and Holland during separate official testimonies.  In the meantime, Hood’s execution was postponed, as the state was not able to carry it out before the expiration of his death warrant.

Following the discovery of the affair, Mr. Hood’s case was brought in front of the TCCA for reconsideration.  Although eight of the nine judges on the court had previously worked with Judge Holland, they still chose to review the case.  Yesterday, in a 6-3 vote, in a dense, almost unreadably bureaucratic 3-page opinion, they dismissed the appeal on the grounds that the issue of Holland and O’Connel’s sexual relations should have been raised earlier, a curious interpretation of procedural rules given the fact that neither the judge nor the prosecutor admitted to the affair until mid-2008, when a civil court ordered them to testify under oath.  

In a more detailed 9-page dissent, the three judge minority argued that the issue of the illicit affair could not have been raised earlier because of “… the principals’ longstanding efforts to keep the affair hidden.” No kidding.

But should that even matter?  Did I mention that the judge and prosecutor were sleeping together? … how is that not enough to merit a new trial?  Whatever its tortured logic, the TCCA ruling clearly violates basic fair trial protections established by the Constitution whose 222nd anniversary we celebrate today.

In the aftermath of the verdict, the Texas Defender Service issued a statement, noting that the TCCA decision supports “the perception that justice is skewed in Texas” and that “obvious and outrageous violations of the Constitution are acceptable in death penalty cases.”  The statement also rightly points out that the Court’s ruling “rewards the judge and prosecutor for maintaining a wall of silence about their affair for nearly two decades.”  The Texas Defender Service skillfully sums up the ramifications of the decision by stating “No one would want to be prosecuted for a parking violation – let alone for capital murder — by a district attorney who is sleeping with the judge.”