What are the chances Tree of Life killer ever gets executed?

The old adage “Be careful what you wish for” is a reminder that decisions and plans may go awry even when they seem to come to fruition, reported Slate. Last week, the Biden administration got what it wanted when a jury voted to sentence Robert Bowers to death for perpetrating what the Washington Post reported was “ the highest-casualty antisemitic attack in the nation’s history.”

Now what?

The Bowers verdict adds a new wrinkle to the already confusing picture of the Biden administration’s position on the death penalty. Specifically, the administration doesn’t actually want to see Bowers executed.

Bowers will join the 41 other people on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana, pursue a lengthy appeals process, and hope that President Biden gets reelected or that he commutes all federal death sentences before leaving office.

A 2015 study suggests that the odds that someone like Bowers will actually be executed are very low. It found that nationwide, less than one in six defendants convicted of capital crimes were actually executed—most of the rest die in prison, while a few are eventually exonerated.

But this is likely just what the Biden administration was after—a death sentence infinitely deferred, a death sentence that would never be carried out.

Let’s recall the horror of what happened on Oct. 27, 2018, when Bowers killed 11 people and wounded other members of the congregations of three synagogues who were worshipping at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Bowers also shot and wounded several police officers who responded to news of the shooting.

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The Legal: Shapiro Calls for End of Death Penalty in Pennsylvania

Matthew T. Mangino
The Legal Intelligencer
March 2, 2023

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has finally done what some recent governors may have contemplated, but never did—call for the end of the death penalty in Pennsylvania.

In June 2018 the Joint State Government Commission, Task Force and Advisory Committee on Capital Punishment, established under Senate Resolution 6 of 2011, issued its long-awaited report. I was a member of the advisory committee that reviewed 17 different aspects of the death penalty and made eight recommendations to the legislature.

In fact, in 2015, Gov. Tom Wolf announced a moratorium on the death penalty in Pennsylvania—still in place today—awaiting the outcome of the task force and advisory commission report. At the time Wolf said in a statement, “Today’s moratorium will remain in effect until this commission has produced its recommendation and all concerns are addressed satisfactorily.” Wolf implemented his unilateral moratorium by granting a temporary reprieve, not a commutation, each time an execution was scheduled.

After the report, Wolf took no action with regard to the efficacy of the death penalty or with regard to the death sentences of more than 100 men and women on Pennsylvania’s death row. All one needs to know about Pennsylvania’s death penalty is that the commonwealth has executed three men since the death penalty was reinstated in 1978. All three men volunteered to be executed—waiving their appeal rights. In fact, Pennsylvania has not carried out an involuntary execution since 1962.

The state’s most recent execution occurred in 1999, when Gary Heidnik was put to death for the murders of two women he tortured in his Philadelphia home. The other two executions were in 1995. Leon Moser killed his wife and two daughters, and Keith Zettlemoyer killed a “friend” who planned to testify against Zettlemoyer at his trial for robbery.

The death penalty in Pennsylvania has been around for parts of five centuries. In that time more than a 1,000 people have been executed. Until 1915, those executions were at the hand of the hangman. Between 1915 and 1962 executions in Pennsylvania were conducted by electrocution—the electric chair. In 1991, the method of execution became lethal injection. Through records compiled by the Reading Eagle and the Death Penalty Information Center during the modern era of Pennsylvania’s death penalty—September 1978 through 2022—Pennsylvania courts have sentenced 417 prisoners to death. There are approximately 101 men and women currently on death row, 11 men have been exonerated, well over 30 inmates have died of natural cause or suicide and three have been executed. 

Twenty-seven states, including Pennsylvania, still have capital punishment on the books. The death penalty has been around in its modern form for about 46 years. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty. The court ruled in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), that the death penalty was unconstitutional, violating the Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote, “These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual.”

That same year, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decided Commonwealth v. Bradley, 403 A.2d 842 (Pa. 1972). On Dec. 15, 1967, George Bradley and two other men entered a bar in Philadelphia with the intent to commit a robbery and ended up killing the bar owner, Charles Mosicant. Bradley was convicted and sentence to death. On appeal, the high court ruled the commonwealth’s death penalty sentencing procedure was unconstitutional. The court cited the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Furman​. Pennsylvania’s death row was emptied; all sentences were judicially reduced to life.

The decisions forced Pennsylvania’s general assembly, and other state legislatures across the country, to review the death penalty and eliminate the arbitrary, capricious and racially discriminatory aspects of capital punishment.

The idea was that the death penalty would be reserved for the worst of the worst. Before a prosecutor could seek the death penalty she would have to prove more than an intentional killing. Each state established aggravating factors that would target the death penalty for the most dangerous and heinous murderers. The decision also called for bifurcated trial. A guilt phase and a penalty phase for the jury to decide life or death. The court in Furman also suggested that states establish procedures for providing the sentencing court with information about the convicted murderer’s character and record.

In 1974, the Pennsylvania legislature enacted a new death penalty statute overriding Pennsylvania Gov. Milton Shapp’s veto. The new death penalty statute was subsequently found unconstitutional in 1977.

In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), found that Georgia, Florida and Texas had enacted new death penalty statutes that were in line with the holding in Furman. Pennsylvania enacted a new death penalty statute in 1978.

Today, the death penalty seems to be spiraling toward extinction. In 2022, there were 18 executions nationwide and only 20 new death sentences meted out across the country. Pennsylvania accounted for one of those death sentences.

Compare those numbers with 1994 and 1998. In 1994, 328 men and women were sentenced to death nationwide. In 1998, there were 98 executions carried out in the United States. Public opinion polls in 2022 showed support for capital punishment remained near historic lows, even amid rising perceptions of crime. Gallup’s 2022 Crime Survey, administered between Oct. 3 and Oct. 20, 2022, reported support for capital punishment held steady at 55%, one percentage point above the 50-year low of 54% in 2021, reported the Death Penalty Information Center.

One way to measure the strength of the death penalty is through a political lens. The death penalty has more to do with political symbolism, “I’m a tough, law and order guy,” than holding killers accountable and deterring future murders.

There were three state governor plebiscites in 2022 where a pause in capital punishment was an issue. Those states were California, Oregon, and, of course, Pennsylvania. In California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who imposed a moratorium on executions, and decommissioned the state’s death chamber, easily won re-election. Newly elected Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek promised to extend the state’s existing moratorium on executions. Shapiro seeks to take the most radical action—abolish the death penalty in Pennsylvania.

“The commonwealth shouldn’t be in the business of putting people to death, period,” Shapiro said. “At its core, for me, this is a fundamental statement of morality, of what’s right and wrong in my humble opinion. And I believe as governor that Pennsylvanians must be on the right side of this issue.”

Shapiro’s position is not the usual political side-step. He didn’t say the death penalty is racist, or there are too may exonerations or even that the process is arbitrary—no, Shapiro contends the death penalty is wrong, state-sponsored death is immoral and Pennsylvania, or any other state for that matter, should not be in the business of death.

The death penalty has lost its way in the muddled political rhetoric of 21st century governance and Shapiro is poised to act. There has not yet been a bill introduced to end the death penalty. Once legislation is introduced, it will be a battle before it ever reaches the governor’s desk.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly and George. and the former district attorney of Lawrence County. He is the author of “The Executioner’s Toll.” You can follow him on twitter @MatthewTMangino or contact him at mmangino@lgkg.com

To read the column CLICK HERE

PA Gov. Shapiro calls for end of death penalty

Gov. Josh Shapiro called on the state legislature to end the death penalty in Pennsylvania on Thursday, marking the first time a governor has formally asked the General Assembly to abolish the controversial sentence, reported The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Inside a West Philadelphia church, Shapiro also reiterated what he told reporters last month: That he would extend the execution moratorium put in place by former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf eight years ago.

“The Commonwealth shouldn’t be in the business of putting people to death, period,” Shapiro said. “At its core, for me, this is a fundamental statement of morality, of what’s right and wrong in my humble opinion. And I believe as governor that Pennsylvanians must be on the right side of this issue.”

Pennsylvania’s last execution was the 1999 lethal injection of Gary Heidnik, who raped and tortured six women he kept chained in the basement of his Franklinville home, then killed and dismembered two of them.

Shapiro, a Democrat and the former Attorney General, previously supported the death penalty “for some of the most heinous cases,” he said. But after recent conversations with advocacy groups and victims’ families who opposed the measure, he said, his stance has shifted.

After the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting in 2018, Shapiro said he believed the killer “deserved to be put to death.”

But some of the victims’ families didn’t want that.

“I was truly moved by their courage and by their grace,” Shapiro said. “That has stayed with me, all of these conversations have stayed with me.”

He also recalled speaking with Lorraine “Ms. DeeDee” Haw, an organizer with the Coalition to Abolish Death by Incarceration, last year, and how she told him she did not believe her brother’s killer should be put to death.

Thursday’s announcement is the “first step” in ending the death penalty in Pennsylvania, Shapiro and lawmakers said. No specific bill to end the death penalty has been introduced yet this session. Once legislation is introduced, it would need to pass the razor-thin Democratic majority in the House and the GOP-controlled Senate before it reaches Shapiro’s desk.

Until state law is changed, Shapiro said he would not sign any death warrants. There are 101 people on death row in Pennsylvania, according to state corrections data.

Pennsylvania once performed the third-highest number of executions in the country, and had the nation’s fourth-largest death row for two decades, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. In recent years, though, its use has declined.

Since 1976, the Commonwealth has only carried out three executions, all under former Republican Gov. Tom Ridge.

Still, State House Republicans signaled Thursday that they were not yet ready to join Shapiro’s call for an end to the death penalty, saying “now is not the time to stop holding criminals to the highest levels of accountability for the most heinous crimes.

“Removing this measure of accountability and deterrence from prosecutorial discretion is at best tone deaf to the concerns of Pennsylvanians, and at worst, disrespectful to the victims of the most serious crimes in our society,” GOP House members said in a statement.

Shapiro’s announcement came just days after he declined to sign his first death warrant — for 27-year-old Rahmael Sal Holt, who shot and killed a police officer near Pittsburgh in 2017.

The legal history of the death penalty in Pennsylvania is complex. In 1972, the State Supreme Court ruled that the Commonwealth’s death penalty sentencing procedures were unconstitutional, and death row sentences were judicially reduced to life.

The legislature reinstated the death penalty in 1974, but three years later, that law was also found unconstitutional. In 1978, the legislature passed a revised version of the law allowing executions. But in 2015, Wolf placed a moratorium on executions, citing concerns about wrongful convictions and racial bias.

For those same reasons, Civil Rights groups have long called for an end to the death penalty. According to the ACLU, people of color have accounted for 43% of all executions since 1976, and represent 55% of those currently awaiting execution.

Racial bias was cited as a factor in what prosecutors now say was the wrongful conviction of Alexander McClay Williams, a Black Pennsylvania teenager who at 16 became the youngest person in Pennsylvania history to be put to death.

In 1931, an all-white jury convicted Williams in the stabbing death of a white woman. But a Delaware County judge overturned his conviction after prosecutors raised questions about his guilt, and he was posthumously vindicated last year.

Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner has said he would never seek the death penalty, and has fiercely advocated for its abolition, though his spokesperson, Jane Roh, said the office has no blanket policy on the issue.

In 2019, Krasner’s office filed a brief with the Commonwealth Supreme Court, asking it to invoke its King Bench power to declare the death penalty unconstitutional. The Attorney General’s Office, under Shapiro, filed a brief opposing Krasner’s petition, Roh said, and ultimately, the high court effectively kicked the issue back to the General Assembly.

Several states have changed their capital punishment laws over the last 10 years, including Maryland and Virginia. New Jersey was the first state to abolish executions in 1965.

Twenty-seven states, including Pennsylvania, still have capital punishment on the books.

To read more CLICK HERE

California dismantles largest death row system in America

California has pushed ahead with controversial efforts to dismantle the largest death row system in America, reported NPR.

Under Gov. Gavin Newsom, the state is moving to make the transfer of condemned inmates permanent and mandatory after what the state's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) calls a successful pilot program that voluntarily moved 101 inmates off death row into general population prisons across the state.

The effort is in keeping with Newsom's belief that the death penalty in America is unjust, is racially and class biased and has little connection to justice.

"That's a helluva thing: The prospect of your ending up on death row has more to do with your wealth and race than it does your guilt or innocence," the Democratic governor said last year. "Think about that. We talk about justice, we preach justice. But as a nation, we don't practice it on death row."

After a 45-day public comment period and a public hearing in March, the state hopes to start moving all 671 death row inmates – 650 men and 21 women — into several other prisons across the state with high-security units.

Some prisoners will be able to get jobs or cellmates if they are mainstreamed into the general prison population.

The CDCR says the move allows the state "to phase out the practice of segregating people on death row based solely on their sentence." No inmates will be re-sentenced and no death row commutations offered, officials say.

Technically, the death penalty still exists in California. Prosecutors can still seek it. But no one has been put to death in the state in 17 years. And in 2019, Newsom imposed a moratorium on executions and he closed the death chamber at San Quentin, the decrepit and still heavily used 19th century prison overlooking San Francisco Bay.

Those who get prison jobs — as clerks, laundry or kitchen helpers – will see 70 percent of their pay go to victims' families, as required under Proposition 66. That 2016 voter-passed initiative amended California's Penal Code to require death-sentenced inmates to work and pay restitution.

Anti-capital punishment groups are elated that the state with the largest condemned population is moving forward with efforts to, in effect, join the 23 other states that have abolished their death rows.

"I'm thrilled. Gavin Newsom is doing a very smart thing and a very positive thing," says actor Mike Farrell, a long-time activist on the issue who chairs the group Death Penalty Focus. "It will continue to show people that the death penalty is neither necessary nor is it doing us any good."

Farrell calls capital punishment barbaric and biased against black, brown and poor people. While he wholly supports Newsom's move, he points out that many death row inmates face serious psychological hurdles, which will complicate the process of mainstreaming death row inmates.

"It's going to be very difficult. There are many people on death row with serious mental issues," he told NPR, noting many have been isolated for decades. "I think it's a very good move on (Newsom's) part. I just think that it has to be done extraordinarily carefully and very, very humanely."

Some murder victim families are opposed

But death penalty proponents and victims' rights advocates are frustrated and angry.

"To hear this news is devastating," says Sandra Friend. She described feeling victimized all over again.

Her 8-year-old son Michael Lyons was making his way home from school in Yuba City, Calif., in 1996 when he was abducted and sodomized by serial killer Robert Boyd Rhoades, who dumped the child's body in a riverbed.

"He (Rhoades) tortured Michael for 10 hours. He stabbed him 70 to 80 times," she says. "And he was 8 years old. Just the little boy full of life, full of dreams."

Rhoades was convicted of Lyons' murder in 1998 and later sentenced to die by lethal injection. But that never happened.

In part, California's death penalty reforms grew out of 2016's Prop. 66, which promised to speed up the time between a death sentence and an execution. The successful ballot measure also required condemned prisoners to work and pay restitution.

Now death penalty proponents accuse Newsom of exploiting a lesser-known section of Prop. 66 for his own ideological and political purposes.

"The governor has taken loopholes and nuances in the law and used them to give criminals – the worst criminals — a break," says Michael Rushford, president of the conservative Criminal Justice Legal Foundation. "To start mainstreaming people like Tiequon Cox, who killed an entire family in Los Angeles after going to the wrong address to do a gang hit, is an abandonment of justice. Injecting politics into criminal justice and public safety is insane. It's unjust, unfair and it's stupid."

Other states have taken similar measures

In recent years governors in Pennsylvania and Oregon also have imposed moratoriums on the death penalty.

Oregon's Kate Brown extended her predecessor's moratorium. And in one of her last acts as governor last month, Brown commuted the sentences of all 17 people on death row to life in prison with no possibility of parole. She also ordered corrections officials to begin dismantling the state's execution chamber.

"I believe that there are many Oregonians that share my values that it is inequitable, immoral and doesn't make sense for the state to take a life, particularly when it is irreversible," she said, after announcing her decision shortly before the Christmas break.

Nationally, five-year averages of executions and new death sentences in America have hit decade lows, according to the recently published annual report by the non-partisan and non-profit Death Penalty Information Center.

Gallup polling shows a majority 55 percent of Americans are in favor of the death penalty for convicted murderers. But that's in stark contrast to the consistent 60 percent to 80 percent support recorded between 1976 and 2016, Gallup data show.

In California, Sandra Friend says it's outrageous that killers like Rhoades may "get rewarded," as she puts it, with expanded work options, even a cellmate.

"For him to be able to leave death row and go into a cushier prison, having maybe possibly a cellie, having a job, is terrifying because he is the worst of the worst. He is a monster," she says.

State officials underscore that inmate transfers and their housing will depend on the specific facts of each inmate.

"Their housing would depend on their individual case factors, and it's what the multidisciplinary teams will be evaluating," says CDCR spokeswoman Vicky Waters.

But Friend and other victims' families worry that simply allowing death row inmates to mingle with prisoners who will eventually get out is dangerous.

"Just to think about him (Rhoades) interacting with other inmates and having the opportunity to teach those skills and those methods of keeping, you know, under the radar is terrifying," Friend says. "He is a great threat to our society, our children."

The state hopes to permanently empty California's death row by this fall, a CDCR official says.

Friend vows to fight the effort. A public hearing on the issue is scheduled in Sacramento for March 8.

"I'm definitely going to make Michael's voice heard," she says, "because he's the one that is getting lost in all of this."

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Alabama governor stops executions after two failed lethal injections

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has ordered a halt to executions in the state after two failed attempts at lethal injections, calling for a “top-to-bottom” review of the process, reported AL.Com.

The announcement came in the form of a press release sent Monday morning. According to the press release, the governor asked Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall to withdraw the state’s two pending motions in the Alabama Supreme Court to set executions for Alan Eugene Miller and James Edward Barber.

“Working in conjunction with Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm, Governor Ivey is asking that the Department of Corrections undertake a top-to-bottom review of the state’s execution process, and how to ensure the state can successfully deliver justice going forward,” the press release stated.

Ivey also asked the Alabama AG’s office to not seek additional execution dates for any other Alabama Death Row inmates until the review is complete. No timeline was provided.

A spokesperson for the Alabama AG’s office said Marshall will ”have more to say on this at a later date.”

Miller was set to be executed on Sept. 22, but survived after prison workers couldn’t find a vein to start the intravenous line needed for the three-drug lethal injection cocktail before the death warrant expired at midnight. Kenneth Eugene Smith, who was set to die Nov. 17, experienced a similar situation and also survived after officials couldn’t start an IV.

A federal judge has ordered the ADOC must preserve evidence from both failed execution attempts.

“For the sake of the victims and their families, we’ve got to get this right. I don’t buy for a second the narrative being pushed by activists that these issues are the fault of the folks at Corrections or anyone in law enforcement, for that matter. I believe that legal tactics and criminals hijacking the system are at play here,” Ivey said in the statement.

“I will commit all necessary support and resources to the Department to ensure those guilty of perpetrating the most heinous crimes in our society receive their just punishment. I simply cannot, in good conscience, bring another victim’s family to Holman looking for justice and closure, until I am confident that we can carry out the legal sentence.”

Hamm also made a statement, which was sent alongside the governor’s.

“I agree with Governor Ivey that we have to get this right for the victims’ sake. Everything is on the table – from our legal strategy in dealing with last minute appeals, to how we train and prepare, to the order and timing of events on execution day, to the personnel and equipment involved. The Alabama Department of Corrections is fully committed to this effort and confident that we can get this done right.”

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Ohio hasn't carried out an execution in 4 years--in 2010 the state executed 8

We’re investigating the status of Ohio’s death penalty, since it’s been four years since the state’s last execution, according to Cleveland 19 News.

We found Ohio’s “unofficial” death penalty moratorium is continuing.

Execution dates for death row inmates continue to be pushed back and rescheduled again.

19 Investigates found there are no executions set for this year anymore, after the governor made some postponements.

Governor Mike DeWine points to the state’s continued struggle to get the drugs needed for lethal injection from pharmaceutical companies as part of the problem.

It’s an issue many other states are facing.

Quisi Bryan was set to be executed next month.

He shot and killed Cleveland police officer Wayne Leon back in 2000.

Bryan is now set to be executed in four years, in 2026.

19 Investigates found 129 Ohio inmates are on death row, including one woman.

Nine executions are set for next year, eight are scheduled for 2024,

10 executions are set for 2025 and five are on the list for 2026.

That’s 42 total executions scheduled so far.

We learned the first execution in 2023 is set for March.

Charles Lorraine was convicted of stabbing an elderly couple in Warren to death in 1986.

The execution of Melvin Bonnell is also set for next year.

Bonnell was convicted for the 1987 murder of Robert E. Bunner in Ohio City.

The latest execution date was just set this Wednesday for a convicted child killer.

The Ohio Supreme Court announced Danny Lee Hill will be put to death July 2026.

Investigators say Hill raped and murdered a 12-year-old boy in Trumbull County back in 1985.

He’s been on death row since 1986 and continues to appeal his conviction.

We discovered the average time an inmate spends on death row in Ohio has increased to about 20 years.

But only one of every six death penalties issued since 1981 have been carried out.

State officials are well aware of issues with the system, calling it “increasingly time consuming, costly and lethargic” in the 2021 Capital Crimes Annual Report.

The Death Penalty Information Center analyzed more than 400 Ohio death sentences and found the most likely outcome isn’t death.

Instead, the death sentence is often overturned and the defendant is resentenced to life or exonerated.

In 2020, DeWine urged lawmakers to find a different method for state executions.

From 1981 to 2021, 336 people received the death penalty in Ohio.

Here is the full statement we received from Governor DeWine’s Office:

Under current Ohio Law, capital punishment is still an allowable punishment for certain crimes, and lethal injection is the only permissible method of capital punishment. However, Governor DeWine has issued several reprieves to individuals with upcoming execution dates due to ongoing problems involving the willingness of pharmaceutical suppliers to provide drugs to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (DRC), pursuant to DRC protocol for executions, without endangering other Ohioans who rely on the State to provide them with prescription drugs from those same suppliers.

To read more CLICK HERE

 

California dismantling America's largest death row

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who three years ago placed a moratorium on executions, now is moving to dismantle the United States’ largest death row by moving all condemned inmates to other prisons within two years, reported The Associated Press.

The goal is to turn the section at San Quentin State Prison into a “positive, healing environment.” Newsom said Monday it’s an outgrowth of his opposition to what he believes is a deeply flawed system, one that “gets my blood boiling.”

“The prospect of your ending up on death row has more to do with your wealth and race than it does your guilt or innocence,” he said. “We talk about justice, we preach justice, but as a nation, we don’t practice it on death row.”

California, which last carried out an execution in 2006, is one of 28 states that maintain death rows, along with the U.S. government, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. While other states like Illinois have abolished executions, California is merging its condemned inmates into the general prison population with no expectation that any will face execution anytime in the near future.

“We are starting the process of closing death row to repurpose and transform the current housing units into something innovative and anchored in rehabilitation,” California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Vicky Waters told The Associated Press.

Oregon similarly transferred its much smaller condemned population to other inmate housing two years ago.

Newsom, a Democrat, imposed a moratorium on executions in 2019 and shut down the state’s execution chamber at San Quentin, north of San Francisco. Now his administration is turning on its head a 2016 voter-approved initiative intended to expedite executions by capitalizing on one provision that allowed inmates to be moved off death row.

“The underlying motive of the administration is to mainstream as many of these condemned murderers as possible,” said Michael Rushford, president of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, which backed the initiative. “Our objective was to speed up the process.”

He added he doesn’t think victims are happy with the administration’s decision.

“They’re moving condemned murderers into facilities that are going to make their lives better and offer them more amenities, while the victims still mourn the death of their family member,” Rushford said.

Newsom said voters approved the move, though he doubts many understood the provision.

“When they affirmed the death penalty, they also affirmed a responsibility ... to actually move that population on death row out and to get them working,” Newsom said.

Newsom is “pouring more salt on the wounds of the victims,” countered Crime Victims United of California president Nina Salarno. “He’s usurping the law.’”

Actor Mike Farrell, president of the group Death Penalty Focus, which opposes the death penalty, said he is thrilled with the idea but concerned by transfers he said could turn condemned inmates into “very ripe targets” for other prisoners.

“We’re talking about people who have been in a specific kind of isolation for decades,” living with the prospect of execution, Farrell said. “To simply move them without very serious consideration of their needs, their personal issues, their psychological state and their safety would be a hideous mistake.”

Corrections officials began a voluntary two-year pilot program in January 2020 that as of Friday had moved 116 of the state’s 673 condemned male inmates to one of seven other prisons that have maximum security facilities and are surrounded by lethal electrified fences.

They intend to submit permanent proposed regulations within weeks that would make the transfers mandatory and “allow for the repurposing of all death row housing units,” Waters said.

The ballot measure approved six years ago also required condemned inmates to participate in prison jobs, with 70% of the money going for restitution to their victims, and corrections officials said that’s their goal with the transfers. By the end of last year, more than $49,000 in restitution had been collected under the pilot program.

Newsom’s proposed budget for the fiscal year starting July 1 seeks $1.5 million to find new uses for the vacant condemned housing.

It notes that death row and its supporting activities are in the same area as facilities used for rehabilitation programs for medium-security San Quentin inmates. The money would be used to hire a consultant to “develop options for (the) space focused on creating a positive, healing environment to provide increased rehabilitative, educational and health care opportunities.”

San Quentin’s never-used $853,000 execution chamber is in a separate area of the prison, and there are no plans to “repurpose” that area, Waters said.

California voters supported the death penalty in 2012 and 2016. An advisory panel to Newsom and lawmakers, the Committee on Revision of the Penal Code, in November became the latest to recommend repealing the death penalty, calling it “beyond repair.”

Under the state’s transfer program, condemned inmates moved to other prisons can be housed in solitary or disciplinary confinement if officials decide they cannot be safely housed with others, although they are supposed to be interspersed with other inmates. Inmates on death row are housed one to a cell, but the transferred inmates can be housed with others if it’s deemed safe.

“There have been no safety concerns, and no major disciplinary issues have occurred,” Waters said.

When it comes to jobs and other rehabilitation activities, condemned inmates outside death row are treated similarly to inmates serving sentences of life without parole. That includes a variety of jobs such as maintenance and administrative duties, according to prison officials.

The condemned inmates are counted more often and are constantly supervised during activities, officials said.

Before they are moved, they are “carefully screened to determine whether they can safely participate in the program,” according to the department. That includes things like each inmate’s security level, medical, psychiatric and other needs, their behavior, safety concerns and notoriety.

Female condemned inmates are housed at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. They can transfer to less restrictive housing within the same prison, and eight of the 21 have done so.

To read more CLICK HERE

 

AG Garland imposes moratorium on federal executions one year after Trump onslaught

 Attorney General Merrick B. Garland imposed a moratorium on federal executions pending a review of the Justice Department’s policies and procedures, reversing the Trump administration’s decision to resume executions of federal death row inmates last year after a nearly two-decade hiatus, reported the Washington Post.

“The Department of Justice must ensure that everyone in the federal criminal justice system is not only afforded the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws of the United States, but is also treated fairly and humanely,” Mr. Garland said in a memo to Justice Department leaders. “That obligation has special force in capital cases.”

Mr. Garland said in his memo that the deputy attorney general, Lisa O. Monaco, would supervise a review of Justice Department policies related to federal executions that were implemented by former Attorney General William P. Barr. He asked that several of the department’s divisions, including the Bureau of Prisons, the criminal division and the civil rights division, participate, along with other federal agencies and outside advocacy groups.

After 17 years without executions, the Justice Department under Mr. Barr began to execute federal death row inmates last summer. He argued that the Justice Department under both parties had sought the death penalty and that the government owed “the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

The Trump administration ultimately executed 13 people, more than three times the number of people put to death by the federal government in the previous six decades.

Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said President Biden approved of Mr. Garland’s decision.

“As the president has made clear, he has significant concerns about the death penalty and how it is implemented, and he believes the Department of Justice should return to its prior practice of not carrying out executions,” Mr. Bates said.

As a candidate, Mr. Biden said that he would work to abolish federal executions and incentivize states to follow suit.

The Supreme Court also said in March that it would review an appeals court’s decision to overturn the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who was sentenced to death for his role in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings.

Should the Biden administration withdraw its support for the death penalty against Mr. Tsarnaev, the Supreme Court case would become moot.

Mr. Garland has asked the department to review policies implemented in the last two years that paved the way to restart federal executions.

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Governor DeWine: Ohio has an 'unofficial moratorium' on capital punishment

Lethal injection is no longer an option for Ohio executions, and lawmakers must choose a different method of capital punishment before any inmates can be put to death in the future, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said according to The Associated Press.

It’s “pretty clear” there won’t be any executions next year, DeWine told The Associated Press during a year-end interview, adding he doesn’t see support in the Legislature for making a switch in execution method a priority. Ohio has an “unofficial moratorium” on capital punishment, he said.

“Lethal injection appears to us to be impossible from a practical point of view today,” the governor said.

DeWine said he still supports capital punishment as Ohio law. But he has come to question its value since the days he helped write the state’s current law — enacted in 1981 — because of the long delays between crime and punishment.

DeWine called himself “much more skeptical about whether it meets the criteria that was certainly in my mind when I voted for the death penalty and that was that it in fact did deter crime, which to me is the moral justification.”

Messages were left for leaders in the GOP-controlled House and Senate seeking comment.

Former Republican House Speaker Larry Householder, now under federal indictment for his alleged role in a $60 million bribery scheme, questioned last year whether the state should reconsider capital punishment because of the cost and Ohio’s inability to find lethal drugs.

The state’s last execution was July 18, 2018, when Ohio put to death Robert Van Hook for killing David Self in Cincinnati in 1985.

Shortly after taking office in 2019, DeWine ordered the Ohio prison system to look at alternative lethal injection drugs. That announcement followed a federal judge’s ruling that said Ohio’s current execution protocol could cause the inmate “severe pain and needless suffering.”

Opponents of Ohio’s death penalty called on lawmakers last month to enact a capital punishment ban during the current lame duck legislative session. They repeated that demand Tuesday.

“It’s time for the General Assembly to just end the death penalty in Ohio and repurpose the funds wasted trying to execute people into programs to better serve the needs of murder victim families,” said Abraham Bonowitz, Death Penalty Action director.

Also Tuesday, DeWine said he remains optimistic about his ability to govern Ohio despite attempts by fellow GOP lawmakers to limit his powers and even impeach him over his handling of the pandemic.

“While the few legislators that want to impeach me have gotten headlines, what has not gotten a lot of headlines is the real work,” DeWine said.

The career politician, who has drawn strident criticism from both right and left, is hopeful about 2021 despite the pandemic surging in many parts of the state, calling next year the “year of recovery.”

When asked whether he had any regrets about decisions he made in the past nine months, DeWine said does not have the luxury to reflect when there is so much work left to do.

“There will be time to reflect on that, there will be books written, there will PhDs and dissertations on the whole pandemic and that’s fine but we’re in the battle now,” he said.

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Families of western Pennsylvania victims want mass murderer's execution carried out

On April 28, 2000, Richard Baumhammers murdered five people and paralyzed a sixth in a racially fueled rampage in western Pennsylvania, reported the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

Baumhammers killed Anita Gordon, 63, his next-door neighbor, and set fire to her house. He then traveled to her synagogue in Scott, Beth El Congregation, and vandalized the building, shooting out its front windows and painting swastikas on the facade.

Baumhammers proceeded to a Scott grocery store, where he killed Anil Thukar, 31, and left Sandeep Patel paralyzed from the neck down. Patel died in 2007 at the age of 32.

Next he killed Ji-Ye Sun, 34, and Thao Pham, 27, at the Ya Fei Chinese Cuisine Restaurant in Robinson before driving to C.S. Kim Karate in Center, Beaver County, where he killed 22-year-old Garry Lee, a African-American man from Aliquippa..

Police in Beaver County nabbed him in Ambridge after the Center shooting.

He was convicted in May 2001 of homicide during a trial in Allegheny County and sentenced to death.

Retired Beaver County District Attorney Anthony Berosh, who served as co-prosecutor, said Baumhammers believed he was starting a war.

“His motive, I think, was clear: This is the beginning of a race war,” Berosh said. “All of his targets were minority groups. Somehow in his head he thought he could trigger this racial war. It was white versus everybody else, and everybody else against the whites and whites would prevail.”

Richard Baumhammers, 54, is on Pennsylvania’s death row. His attorneys argued that he suffered from mental illness and committed the crimes while he was delusional, something prosecutors successfully disputed.

Baumhammers isn’t set to be executed anytime soon because of a statewide moratorium on the death penalty in Pennsylvania, much to the chagrin of some people who knew the victims and those in law enforcement who responded to the crime.

“It’s disappointing when so many people are left just kind of holding this wreckage in their hands and he’s sitting in jail, OK,” is how Jennifer Thomas puts it.

Thomas and her husband, George, live in Beaver. George Thomas was at the Center karate studio where Baumhammers shot and killed Lee, who was his best friend, his wife said.

Her husband won’t talk about what happened that day, Jennifer Thomas said.

“It’s something that’s always on our minds. It’s something that we think about an awful lot,” she said.

“It’s frustrating. I never would say I hope that person should die, but when you look at the situation and the heartache he caused, it’s hard to not think there’s room for justice in that situation,” she said.

Center police Chief Barry Kramer has written two letters to Gov. Tom Wolf seeking for justice to be meted out in the Baumhammers case.

“By eliminating the death penalty, the void of closure for victims will grow and never be filled. We believe that we must clearly demonstrate to society that murder is an intolerable crime that will be appropriately punished,” Kramer wrote the governor in 2015.

Kramer didn’t receive a response to that letter. He sent a similar letter in 2016, with no response.

The governor’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request seeking comment for this story.

All of Baumhammers’ appeals have been denied.

Berosh said there’s no question that Baumhammers, whom he considers “totally evil,” deserved the death sentence.

“In my opinion we asked 12 of Allegheny County’s tried and true to give him the death penalty, and they did,” he said. “For me to turn around today and say, ‘No, don’t do that,’ would be a breach of trust in what we asked the jurors to do in the first place.”

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Colorado lawmakers vote to abolish the death penalty

Colorado is set to become the 22nd U.S. state to abolish the death penalty after lawmakers approved a repeal bill that Democratic Gov. Jared Polis has pledged to sign into law, reported Time.

Passage had been virtually certain with Democrats holding a substantial majority in the House — even with several Democratic lawmakers casting no votes

The bill passed by the Democrat-dominated state Senate in January would apply to offenses charged starting July 1 and would not affect the fate of three men on Colorado’s death row who face execution by lethal injection. But Polis has suggested he might consider clemency for them if asked.

“All clemency requests are weighty decisions that the governor will judge on their individual merits,” said Polis spokesman Conor Cahill.

Colorado’s last execution was carried out in 1997, when Gary Lee Davis was put to death by lethal injection for the 1986 kidnapping, rape and murder of a neighbor, Virginia May.

Wednesday’s debate came after lawmakers spent 11 hours late Monday and early Tuesday engaging in somber and often emotional discussions over morality, personal faith, deterrence, discrimination against defendants of color and wrongful convictions.

Democratic Rep. Jovan Melton said all three of Colorado’s condemned men come from his suburban Denver district, are African-American and that blacks account for just 4% of Colorado’s 5 million residents.

“They’re African-American, they’re males, my age. That’s not justice,” Melton said. “That is the last remnant of Jim Crow there is in Colorado.” He added that he wasn’t absolving them of their crimes.

But Republican and some Democratic opponents insisted that the threat of facing the death penalty has compelled countless defendants to seek plea deals to solve or close cases. They also urged their colleagues to refer the issue to voters in a referendum.

“I want to apologize to you all,” GOP Rep. Shane Sandridge said, addressing crime victims’ surviving loved ones. “I want to apologize to the jurors that have suffered through these cases and then watch people try to override your will.”

Several Western states have moved to abolish capital punishment or put it on hold in recent years and no inmates have been executed in any state west of Texas in the past five years, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

Political pushes for the repeal of the death penalty Wyoming, Utah and Ohio have emerged in recent years. Wyoming’s Legislature came close last year, and another initiative there his year had 26 Republican sponsors. Republicans hold 78 of Wyoming’s 100 legislative seats.

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SCOTUS halts federal executions

The Supreme Court will not allow the Trump administration to resume executions in federal death penalty cases after a 16-year hiatus, reported The New York Times. The move, which left in place a preliminary injunction from a federal judge in Washington, effectively stayed the executions of four men scheduled to be put to death in the coming weeks. The court’s brief, unsigned order said it expected an appeals court to decide the inmates’ challenges “with appropriate dispatch.”

In a separate statement, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh, said that the inmates “were convicted in federal court more than 15 years ago for exceptionally heinous murders” and that “the government has shown that it is very likely to prevail” when the case moves forward.

“Nevertheless,” Justice Alito wrote, “in light of what is at stake, it would be preferable for the district court’s decision to be reviewed on the merits by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit before the executions are carried out.”

He wrote that he would have set a deadline for the appeals court to act.

“The court has expressed the hope that the court of appeals will proceed with ‘appropriate dispatch,’ and I see no reason why the court of appeals should not be able to decide this case, one way or the other, within the next 60 days,” Justice Alito wrote. “The question, though important, is straightforward and has already been very ably briefed in considerable detail by both the solicitor general and by the prisoners’ 17-attorney legal team.”

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Should California death penalty moratorium stop new death sentences?

The California Supreme Court essentially froze the death penalty trial of Jade Douglas Harris, which was set to start this month, as it decides whether it will consider an argument by his defense attorney that he can’t get a fair trial in light of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s moratorium on executions in the state, reported the Los Angeles Times.

The court has until Aug. 30 to decide whether to take up a matter that could result in essentially blocking death penalty trials in California while the moratorium is in effect during Newsom’s term.

Public defenders representing Harris, who is accused in a shooting rampage that left three people dead and two others wounded, argue that jurors must believe that when they hand down a death sentence, it will be carried out.

Harris is charged with killing three people in Downey after responding to a Craigslist ad from a family selling their Chevy Camaro. He has pleaded not guilty.

The attorneys say a fair decision is impossible given that Newsom granted a reprieve to the more than 700 prisoners on death row and had the state’s execution chamber dismantled — with much fanfare in front of cameras.

“It’s just really impossible for a jury to go into a jury room and say, ‘We’re going to ignore that,’” said Robert Sanger, a defense attorney who first made this argument on behalf of a defendant in an unrelated capital case in Los Angeles County.

Sanger’s client is Cleamon Johnson, a gang leader known as “Big Evil” who is charged with five counts of murder in a case coming up for trial in January.

 “The jury making that order has to really believe it, because if they don’t, they could be cavalier about it and just say: ‘Well, let’s send a message.… We know [the death sentence] is never going to happen, but let’s do it anyway,’” Sanger said.

Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School, said there’s a real risk to the accused if that is the mindset of jurors.

“The question is likely to be: Is there any kind of instruction or precautionary steps that a trial judge can take to prevent that from occurring?” she said.

It’s hard to predict what the court will decide, Levenson said, but its stay in the Harris case signals that the state’s highest justices are taking his petition seriously.

“It’s not a frivolous issue,” she said.

Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, said he was disappointed the court was seriously considering what he called a “meritless argument.”

“Newsom’s moratorium only lasts for the duration of his term as governor. Nobody sentenced today would be executed within the next seven years anyway,” said Scheidegger, whose organization backed a measure to speed up executions in California. “And everybody pretty much knows that.”

Prosecutors in Johnson’s case said in court papers that any of his concerns can be handled through appropriate jury instructions and during voir dire, when jurors are questioned before the trial to determine their fitness. They argued that concerns about fairness can also be assessed on appeal.

“Jurors are routinely asked to set aside these types of things in order to reach a just verdict based on the evidence and the law,” prosecutors wrote.

A Los Angeles County district attorney’s office spokeswoman said in a statement that the law hasn’t changed, and until it does, prosecutors will “continue to fairly evaluate all special circumstance cases and seek death against the worst of the worst offenders, including child murderers and serial killers.”

Newsom’s office did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

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Pennsylvania’s Death Penalty Is in Peril—We Can, and Must, Do Better

Matthew T. Mangino

The Legal Intelligencer

May 9, 2019

Recently, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of convicted cop killer Eric Frein. The court’s 45-page opinion, written by Justice Debra Todd, found Frein’s conviction was “supported by overwhelming evidence.”

The high court found that the Pennsylvania State Police violated Frein’s Fifth and Sixth Amendment rights by questioning him after he invoked his right to remain silent and his right to an attorney. However, the court found those violations to be harmless and not prejudicial.

The Fifth and Sixth Amendment protections are relevant in any criminal prosecution. The right to counsel and the right to remain silent are fundamental.  A thorough analysis by the court was warranted.

The court also refused to grant Frein a new trial on additional grounds that are more nuanced and specific to the death penalty. First, the court did not believe that the victim impact evidence presented by the prosecution during the penalty phase of the trial was prejudicial. Although the defense presented 29 mitigating factors, the jury found none and therefore a potentially flawed jury instruction had no impact on the verdict.

The court found that Frein ambushed Cpl. Bryon K. Dickson II with “malice and the specific intent to kill,” and his conduct warranted the death penalty. Now Frein will go to Pennsylvania’s death row with little chance of ever being executed.

The death penalty has been around in its modern form for about 43 years. In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court outlawed the death penalty. The court ruled in Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972), that the death penalty was unconstitutional, violating the Eighth Amendment ban against cruel and unusual punishment. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote, “These death sentences are cruel and unusual in the same way that being struck by lightning is cruel and unusual.”

The decision forced state legislatures to review the death penalty and eliminate the arbitrary, capricious and racially discriminatory aspects of capital punishment. The court suggested that states establish criteria to direct and limit death sentences and provide the sentencing authority with information about the accused’s character and record.

In 1976, the Supreme Court in Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), found that three of five states that amended their death penalty statute—Georgia, Florida and Texas—did conform to the directives of Furman. The death penalty was back.

Since Gregg, there have been 1,495 men and women executed nationwide. Three of those executions took place in Pennsylvania. Keith Zettlemoyer, Leon Moser and Gary M. Heidnik are the only men to have been executed in Pennsylvania since 1976. The last execution in Pennsylvania was carried out on July 6, 1999.

In February 2015, Gov. Tom Wolf announced a moratorium on the death penalty pending a review of the Pennsylvania Task Force and Advisory Commission on Capital Punishment Report, and for purposes of full disclosure I was a member of that task force. At the time, the governor said that the decision was not based on sympathy for the inmates, but out of concern over flaws in the system. He stated that as it stood, the system is an endless cycle of court proceedings, and is ineffective, unjust and expensive.

The report took the advisory commission nearly seven years to complete. The 280-page report found, among other things, that the death penalty is costly, inconsistently applied geographically across the state, and disproportionately impacts people with intellectual disability and mental illness.

Yet, nearly a year after the report and four years after the governor’s moratorium nothing has been done to fix the death penalty. But, there is bipartisan action by Philadelphia Democrat House member Christopher M. Rabb and Lebanon Republican Francis X. Ryan to abolish Pennsylvania’s death penalty.

In a co-sponsored memo Rabb and Ryan assert, “Although Pennsylvania has the country’s fifth highest death row population, currently at 175 inmates, only three executions have occurred in recent decades, and the state has not executed anyone who did not voluntarily give up their appeals in more than 50 years. According to a Reading Eagle analysis, those three executions have cost taxpayers $816 million.”

This comes at a time when support for the death penalty is waning. Twenty states and the District of Columbia have abolished capital punishment. According to the New York Times, four additional states—including Pennsylvania—have imposed moratoriums on executions. Not only are executions down, death sentences are down as well. In 2018, 14 states and the federal government imposed death sentences, more than haif of those 42 death sentences came from four states.

Disdain for the death penalty is not new. In 1994, Justice Harry Blackmun famously said, “From this day forward I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.” Blackmun had voted to restore the death penalty and even to approve mandatory death sentences. But after 25 years, he said, “I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.”

More recently, Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in a 2015 dissent—joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg—in Glossip v. Gross, 576 U.S. ___ (2015), that it was “highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment,” the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

Yet, the death penalty continues. A closer look at the current status of capital punishment is revealing. Just 10 states are responsible for about 83 percent of executions since 1976.

Evolving standards of decency in a “mature society,” the analysis used to outlaw the execution of juveniles and those intellectually disabled, have made carrying out of executions increasingly rare nationwide. Last year, there were 25 executions carried out in the United States. All 25 were carried out in only eight states.

So far this year there have been five executions nationwide. There are approximately 2,721 men and women on death row according to the Death Penalty Information Center, an anti-death penalty advocacy group.

If not another person was sentenced to death in this country, at the current rate of executions, it would take 108 years to close the doors on death row. Pennsylvania can, and must, do better.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George. 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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