Matthew T. Mangino
GateHouse Media
November 24, 2017
For the second time in recent years, a condemned killer
emerged alive from the Ohio death house, reported the Columbus Dispatch.
The scheduled execution of twice-convicted killer Alva
Campbell was called off when a medical team with the Ohio Department of
Rehabilitation and Correction could not find two viable sites for a lethal
injection. Afterward, Governor John Kasich issued a temporary reprieve and
rescheduled Campbell’s execution for 2019.
One of Alabama’s longest-serving death row inmates,
66-year-old Vernon Madison was cleared for execution by the United State
Supreme Court. He was convicted in 1985 of killing a Mobile, Alabama police
officer, according to the Birmingham News.
In May 2016, Madison was set to die by lethal injection, but
hours after the scheduled execution the Supreme Court issued a ruling upholding
a lower court’s stay of execution.
This month, the High Court unanimously reversed that
decision even though medical staff and prison officials agree that, as of the
result of two strokes, Madison cannot remember his crime or why he is on death
row.
On the other hand, a Nevada death row inmate whose execution
was postponed on Nov. 14 is complaining to a judge that he’s suffering what he
calls “an open-ended and unnecessary delay.”
Scott Raymond Dozier is a volunteer. Unlike Campbell and
Madison he wants to die. He was returned to suicide watch — Nevada doesn’t want
him to kill himself before they get a chance to kill him. Dozier would become
the first person executed in Nevada since 2006.
Court documents show that Dozier sent a Nov. 13 letter
asking the judge to lift a stay of execution that was issued over concerns
about the three-drug lethal injection protocol that prison officials intended
to use, reported the Omaha World-Herald.
These three cases — each unique — are playing out in an era
of declining interest in the death penalty.
Nineteen states and the District of Columbia have abolished
capital punishment. According to the New York Times, four more states have
imposed moratoriums on executions. Not only are executions down, death
sentences are down as well. There are 31 states with the death penalty. Only 14
states handed down any death sentences last year, for a total of 50 across the
country — less than half the number six years ago. California, which issued
more than one-quarter of last year’s death sentences, hasn’t executed anyone
since 2006.
In 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Glossip v. Gross, a
case examining lethal injection. Justice Stephen Breyer noted in a dissent that
the decline of the death penalty county by county could one day persuade the
court to end it everywhere. Breyer’s argument was anchored in the
Constitution’s Eighth Amendment banning punishment that is “cruel and unusual.”
There are signs that the end is near for the death penalty.
Before Roper v. Simmons, the 2005 decision that abolished
the death penalty for juveniles, carrying out a juvenile execution had become
an unusual occurrence — not unlike today’s “adult” death penalty.
Prior to 2005, 21 states still had the death penalty for
juvenile offenders, but only one used it with any regularity. Texas executed 13
people who committed murder as juveniles between 1976 and 2005. Virginia and
Oklahoma followed with three and two executions, respectively. Those three
states had carried out 82 percent of all executions of juvenile offenders in
the United States in the prior 25 years, according to the American Bar
Association.
A closer look at the current status of capital punishment is
revealing. Just 10 states are responsible for about 83 percent of the 1,465
executions since 1976.
Evolving standards of decency in a “mature society” have
made the carrying out of executions increasingly rare nationwide. Last year,
there were 20 executions carried out in the United States. All 20 were carried
out in five of the 31 states with capital punishment.
So far in 2017 there have been 23 executions nationwide,
with one additional execution scheduled before the end of the year
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett,
Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010 was released by
McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him
on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.
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