Update: Three Cheers for New York Assemblypersons!

The New York State Assembly Codes Committee today defeated a bill to reinstate New York’s death penalty. The vote comes after five full days of public testimony that the death penalty is riddled with flaws and wastes millions of dollars. The Assembly’s report of the hearing was released last week, adding to a growing wave of voices questioning the death penalty across the country.

“New York is not alone. There is a growing consensus in this country
that as a matter of policy, the death penalty is an expensive failure,” said Shari Silberstein, Co-Director of the Quixote Center, a national faith-based organization working for a moratorium on executions while questions of fairness are studied and addressed.

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Original Post: 4/11/05

In Texacution land, the legislature has defeated a bill to make life without the possibility of parole an option to the death penalty.

Legislation that would allow those convicted of capital murder to be sentenced to life in prison without parole recently failed to win a key procedural vote in the Texas Senate, largely because of opposition from prosecutors and pro-death penalty organizations who said it would result in fewer death sentences.

Although supported by a strong majority of the senators and the people of Texas, the bill needed a 2/3 majority in order to be debated. The Senate's failure to pass the bill means that Texas and New Mexico remain the only two death penalty states in the nation to not offer life without parole as an alternative sentencing option.

Here is more information about LWOP. Our prior post on the Texas bill is here.

If you're in Chicago during the next month and looking for something different, check out "Dead Wrong", which came about when death row inmate Darby Tillis, who was released after it was proven he was framed for a double murder at a hot dog stand, went knocking on theater doors asking to put on a one-night show about his experience. [The Chicago Tribune reviews the show here.]

Tillis has the distinction of being one of the first exonerated Death Row inmates. He was sentenced to death in 1979 for a double murder at a hot dog stand in the Uptown neighborhood. Fingered by the real killer's girlfriend, who set him up to protect her boyfriend, Tillis went through five trials before he was freed in 1987 with the help of new evidence and petitions brought by Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions and the MacArthur Justice Center.

The theater company found his experience so compelling, they made the show part of its regular season. It opened last night and will run through May 15.

Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin criticizes my enthusiasm for Meet Vernon, the first blog by a death row inmate.

Probably, she would not appreciate that I sometimes speak to students as young as those in middle school about the humanity of death row inmates, showing them blown-up images of several of those included in the 2000 Benneton campaign, "We on Death Row" and reading parts of their interviews. Nor would Ms. Malkin appreciate the "thank you" letters I've received from the teachers and students who've listened to my talk and were moved by the experience of viewing the actual faces of those of death row and hearing their words.

Ms. Malkin quips that she doesn't want to hear the condemned talk about their IPods or their razors or cameras. Of course, that's not what they talk about. They talk about their hopes, their fears, their lost dreams, their remorse, their nightmares. They talk about what it's like to know with certainty that the state is going to kill you, how they've messed up their lives, the things they miss, the people they've loved, their religion, their mothers, their children...and more.

Sears Roebuck didn't appreciate the Benneton campaign at the time and pulled the clothing line from their stores. My response to Sears was to call for a boycott of their stores. Crime victims didn't like that Benneton bought billboard space to display the campaign and ultimately, Benneton took them down. The Attorney General of Missouri sued. When the campaign began, all 96 pages of it was on the Internet. Now, you can't find the campaign online anywhere. It is as if it's been censored out of existence. I still have several copies, and this site still carries the press release to the campaign. Here's a portion:

New competency hearings began today for convicted Connecticut serial killer Michael Ross. Last month, he was granted a stay of execution after the issue arose of whether death row-itis had affected his decision to waive his appeals and ask for death.

Dr. Michael Norko, state psychiatrist today said nothing had changed his opinion that Ross is competent since the last time he testified.

Judge Patrick Clifford said this hearing will determine two things; if Ross suffers a metal disease or defect and if it affects his ability to make the decision to die...State psychiatrist Dr. Mike Norko, the man who conducted the now famous jailhouse interview and who testified in December that Ross was competent to make his own decisions, said that after looking at the new evidence and interviewing Ross again his decision was still the same.

Background is here. The Connectiut Law Blog (formerly named Kirby's blog) and A Public Defender are following the hearings. (The photo on Public Defender's site is not of a public defender but of Gideon of Gideon v. Wainwright fame, the case that mandated effective assistance of counsel for everyone facing imprisonment)

Blogging has arrived at death row. Meet Vernon is the first weblog written by a death row inmate.

Here's how it works, according to the sites creator, Virginia Simmons:

Vernon Lee Evans, is the next person to be executed on Maryland’s death row. You can write Vernon a question using the link at the top of the screen or by writing an email directly to MeetVernon@GMail.com . I will print out the emails and mail them to Vernon who is currently in a maximum security cell in Baltimore, Maryland. Vernon will mail me back his responses and I’ll post them here.

Vernon was supposed to be executed this month but very recently got a stay of execution. You can read about his case here, and sign a petition to save his life. Read Vernon's description of a typical day on death row.

Meet Vernon even has a blogroll, and TalkLeft is proud to be included on it. This is an experiment, but wouldn't it be great to see every death row inmate with a blog?

Here's a list of currently scheduled executions for the remainder of 2005. Also check out these excellent blogs: Abolish the Death Penalty by David Elliott of NCADP and the Lonely Abolitionist.

Update: More discussion about why death row inmates should have blogs.

by TChris

Amnesty International USA recently updated its "facts and figures on the death penalty." A noteworthy fact:

In 2004, 97 per cent of all known executions took place in China, Iran, Viet Nam and the USA.

What wonderful company we keep.

by TChris

A bill that would have replaced Connecticut's death penalty with life imprisonment was defeated in the state's House of Representatives yesterday by a vote of 89-60. The bill would have spared serial killer Michael Ross (TalkLeft background here, here, and here) from execution. One of the persons speaking in favor of the bill was a woman Ross raped in 1983.

"I'm not a killer. I couldn't do it," Vivian Dobson said through tears. "I'm so sorry to the parents [of the murder victims] because I lived and their babies died. And I can't change that. But I don't want to be a part of killing somebody else."

"For 18 years, I've been hiding my feelings and holding in my feelings to help those poor girls that he took away from everybody. And I can't. I can't. I can't do it," said Dobson, who escaped after pulling a knife on him. "I've been carrying guilt because now his blood's going to be on my hands, too. And I can't do it. That's not me."

The execution is scheduled for May 11.

The Colorado Supreme Court issued two correct rulings today, one in the Lisl Auman case as we reported here, and another one in a locally high profile rape-murder case, in which the defendant, Robert Harlan had been sentenced to death. The Court vacated the death sentence because jurors consulted the bible during deliberations .

Ruling that juries cannot turn to the Bible for advice during deliberations, the Colorado Supreme Court on Monday refused to reinstate the death penalty in a brutal rape and murder because jurors had studied such verses as "eye for eye, tooth for tooth."

On a 3-2 vote, justices ordered Robert Harlan to serve life in prison without parole for kidnapping 25-year-old cocktail waitress Rhonda Maloney in 1994 and raping her at gunpoint for two hours.

In the truth is stranger than fiction department: Several Chinese provinces are using "death vans" to carry out court-ordered executions - in some cases, 15 minutes after a death sentence has been imposed. [Via Crim Prof Blog]

THE death van is an inconspicuous blue-and-white police vehicle that parks near the courtroom when its services are required by the Chinese judicial system.

Inside it is fitted with a couch that can be raised or lowered like an operating table, set in the middle of the floor. There is space on either side for the bailiff, the court medical expert and one or two policemen to hold down the condemned man.

A lethal injection is then administered in a two-stage process by the medical expert, who in some cases may be a qualified doctor, and the bailiff. The process is swift and efficient, according to a policeman who has witnessed the vans in use in Liaoning province, northeast China.

by TChris

As support for the death penalty continues to erode, some conservative politicians are starting to reconsider the pro-death stance that has been politically popular for so long. Among them, Sen. Rick Santorum, a Catholic who appears to be open to the church's renewed interest in abolishing death as a punishment.

He has not become an abolitionist, and he believes church teaching against the death penalty carries less weight than its longer-standing opposition to abortion. But he questions what he once unquestioningly supported.

Santorum agrees that "the application of the death penalty should be limited" -- not much of a concession, but a start. At least he's thinking about the issue.

"I never thought about it that much when I was really a supporter of the death penalty. I still see it as potentially valuable, but I would be one to urge more caution than I would have in the past," he said.

Santorum's comments come in response to a recent poll showing that opposition to the death penalty among Catholics has nearly doubled since 2001.

The Chicago Tribune today in an editorial supports a pending bill changing the burden of proof in death penalty cases to beyond all doubt from beyond a reasonable doubt.

The Illinois House is considering legislation that would establish a higher burden of proof in capital case sentencing. Judges and jurors in criminal trials would still apply the time-tested standard of guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." But the standard to impose a death sentence would be even higher. Under the legislation, the court would tell jurors that they may impose a death sentence "if the jury unanimously determines that the evidence leaves no doubt respecting the defendant's guilt." If jurors had any residual, or lingering, doubts, they would impose a sentence of life in prison.

Given the deeply troubling experience in Illinois, it should be easy for supporters and opponents of capital punishment to agree on this: When the state is going to impose the ultimate, irreversible punishment, there should be no doubt that the person paying for the crime is the one who committed it.

And in Texas, S.B. 60 has passed it's first house vote. It would add a third option for juries in death cases - life without the possibility of parole.