GateHouse: Overdose the leading cause of injury death

Matthew T. Mangino
GateHouse News Service
July 11, 2014
Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin delivered his annual State of the State address in January, and according to Rolling Stone Magazine, Shumlin devoted his entire speech to what he perceived as the state’s biggest threat — heroin addiction.

“In every corner of our state, heroin and opiate-drug addiction threatens us,” he said. “What started as an OxyContin and prescription-drug-addiction problem in Vermont has now grown into a full-blown heroin crisis.”

Less than a month later, Oscar winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman died of a heroin overdose in New York City.

Deaths from drug overdose have been rising steadily over the past two decades and have become the leading cause of injury death in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Every day in the United States, 113 people die as a result of a drug overdose.

To add some perspective, the CDC documented 38,329 fatal drug overdoses in the United States in 2010. That same year, 15,529 people with an AIDs diagnosis died and 11,078 people were murdered with a firearm.

These deaths are not occurring in filthy “drug houses” where junkies share dirty needles to get high. Fatal overdoses from opiate prescription medications such as oxycodone, hydrocodone, and methadone have quadrupled since 1999, accounting for an estimated 16,651 deaths in 2010.

“It is pretty amazing. Many people are focusing on the return of heroin and saying, ‘It’s all the fault of criminals.’ You’ve got to remember, 4 in 5 of people today who start using heroin began their opioid addiction on prescription opioids. The responsibility doesn’t start today with the stereotypical criminal street dealer,” Keith Humphreys, one of the nation’s leading addiction researchers from Stanford University told the Washington Post.

Why so many overdoses?

Humphreys says “overdose occurs because [addicts] had a loss of tolerance.” Tolerance is lost by the “consumption of other substances. This is particularly true of alcohol, which seems to lower the body’s ability to tolerate opiates.” Humphreys goes on to say, “Most of what we call “opiate overdoses” are really polydrug overdoses: alcohol and heroin, alcohol and oxycontin, benzodiazepine, alcohol and Vicodin, combinations like that.”

Robert S. Hoffman an emergency physician at NYU Langone Medical Center and Bellevue Hospital wrote in a New York Times op-ed earlier this year, “[T]hat up to 85 percent of users overdose in the presence of others.” As a result, an opportunity exists “for friends, family and other non-health care providers to intervene.”

Naloxone is an antidote to heroin overdose. The antidote has been in clinical use for more than 30 years. According to Hoffman, it can be administered via needle or as a nasal spray, and it works by displacing heroin from its receptors in the brain and rapidly restoring the overdose victim to consciousness and normal breathing.

Hoffman writes, “Some people might argue that the widespread distribution of a safe, effective and inexpensive antidote might actually encourage drug use. But that’s like suggesting that air bags and seatbelts encourage unsafe driving.”

Seventeen states and the District of Columbia have amended their laws to increase access to naloxone, resulting in over 10,000 overdose reversals since 2001, reported the U.S. Department of Justice.

This spring, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder called the rise in overdose deaths from heroin and other prescription pain-killers an “urgent public health crisis.”
“When confronting the problem of substance abuse, it makes sense to focus attention on the most dangerous types of drugs. And right now, few substances are more lethal than prescription opiates and heroin.” Holder said.

One remedial measure recommended by Holder — encourage first responders to carry naloxone.

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was recently released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter at @MatthewTMangino.
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The Cautionary Instruction: Pennsylvania’s 'Revenge-Porn' bill awaits governor’s signature

Matthew T. Mangino
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/Ipso Facto
July 11, 2014
As part of a flurry of last-minute activity, state lawmakers have sent Governor Tom Corbett a bill that would outlaw so-called "revenge porn" in Pennsylvania.
On revenge porn sites, users upload X-rated photos of ex-lovers. I’m going to refer to the victims as women — occasionally men are victimized — but the victims are predominately women. The X-rated material is posted without the woman's permission. A woman sends a personal, intimate photograph to her boyfriend and when the relationship ends; her image is all over the internet, often with a name, location and links to her social media accounts.
Basically, revenge porn works like this:

1. Person A and Person B get married, date or hook up. They exchange or make intimate photographs and/or videos.

2. Person A and Person B stop getting along, and Person A gets angry.

3. Person A disseminates Person B’s private photographs or videos without consent — either to humiliate person B, or for profit, or both.

State Senator Judy Schwank a Democrat from Berks County, proposed the Senate’s version of the bill, saying that when it becomes law upon receiving Governor Corbett’s signature as expected, "persons who publicly post sexual images of their partners in order to annoy them or harm them will commit a crime that will have significant consequences."
She's not kidding: Violations of Pennsylvania's revenge-porn law will carry up to two years in state prison — or five years if the victim is a minor, which means that teenagers will need to be real clear about this law when they go through the emotional turmoil of their first break-up — and, like many crimes, will also come with the potential for financial damages in civil court.
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, laws have been enacted in 10 states including Arizona, Idaho, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin. At least 27 other state legislatures are considering some measure to outlaw similar conduct. In New Jersey, legislation was passed in the wake of the tragic suicide of 18-year-old Rutgers University student Tyler Clementi who was videotaped without his consent during a sexual encounter with another male.
California was ahead of the curve, passing a law in the fall of 2013 to prohibit the distribution of "intimate" images taken "with the intent to cause serious emotional distress." But some argue the law — which protects any images that were taken with the subject's consent if the distributor of the image is also the photographer — doesn’t go far enough.
(Image: matto353/iStock)

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Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George, P.C. He is the former district attorney of Lawrence County and just completed a six year term on the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole. His weekly column on crime and punishment is syndicated by GateHouse New Service. You can read his musings on the criminal justice system at www.mattmangino.com and follow Matt on Twitter @MatthewTMangino. His new book The Executioner’s Toll, 2010: The Crimes, Arrests, Trials, Appeals, Last Meals, Final Words and Executions of 46 Persons in the United States is now available from McFarland & Company publishers.
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Child pornography sniffing police dogs

According to the Huffington Post, police dogs in New England are being trained to sniff out child pornography as state police in Massachusetts and Rhode Island to fight child porn trafficking, according to the Providence Journal.
Smart pups, like Thoreau, a golden Labrador who trained at the Connecticut State Police Training Academy for 22 weeks, can pinpoint hard drives, thumb drives and other technological devices that may be hidden in a home.
The Providence Journal reports:

Given to the state police by the Connecticut State Police, the dog assisted in its first search warrant in June pinpointing a thumb drive containing child pornography hidden four layers deep in a tin box inside a metal cabinet. That discovery led the police to secure an arrest warrant, state police Cpl. Eric Yelle says.
“If it has a memory card, he’ll sniff it out,” Det. Adam Houston, Thoreau’s handler, says.

At times, child pornographers hide devices in ceiling tiles or even radios.  

 Of course, not every memory card or hard drive contains child pornography. But police say that hard drives containing illicit material are often hidden away from suspects' computers, the Boston Globe reports. Not for long -- Thoreau and some 65 other dogs trained in the Connecticut police academy program are here to help.
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Gun violence kills 14 in Chicago over holiday weekend

Gun violence erupted in Chicago over the holiday weekend, with 14 people killed and another 68 wounded from July 3 through early July 7. Two of the fatal shootings were by Chicago police, reported The Christian Science Monitor.
It was the city’s highest concentration of gun violence this year, but in its wake it was ascribed to familiar suspected causes, depending on the source: inadequate policing, lax gun laws, and lack of economic opportunity.
Most of the Chicago shootings took place in areas plagued by school closings and systemic losses in manufacturing jobs: Englewood, Roseland, Gresham, and West Pullman. Most of the fatalities were teenage boys or young adult men.

In gun violence over the Fourth of July weekend last year, 11 people were killed and 62 wounded.

While over the long term gun violence in Chicago is declining, the high-profile street violence is a political liability for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who released a statement calling the number of shootings and murders “simply unacceptable.”

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PLW: Death-Penalty Support Waning, Not Disappearing

Matthew T. Mangino
The Pennsylvania Law Weekly
July 8, 2014
There was a recent lull in executions in this country. For 49 days beginning on April 29 there was not a single execution nationwide. Then on June 17 and June 18 there were executions in Florida, Georgia and Missouri. The last execution prior to June 17 was in Oklahoma, and it did not go well.
Clayton Lockett died after his April 29 execution was halted when prison officials noticed he was writhing on the gurney, gritting his teeth and attempting to lift his head.
Oklahoma was using a novel three-drug execution protocol. Prison officials believed the lethal injection drugs were not being administered properly. The doctor inside the death chamber reported an IV became dislodged and the lethal drugs were not flowing through Lockett's veins.
The state's prison director halted the execution. Lockett died about 43 minutes later from what has been described as a heart attack, according to news reports. A number of executions were subsequently postponed in the wake of Lockett's "failed" execution.
On June 18, the scheduled execution of Lewis Jordan in Pennsylvania was postponed. Jordan was convicted in 2009 of shooting Philadelphia police officer Chuck Cassidy in the head during the robbery of a Dunkin' Donuts.
The reason for the postponement was not renewed concern over lethal injection or the botched execution of Lockett. The reason was that, although Pennsylvania has had the death penalty for more than 35 years and more than 200 men and women are on death row, Pennsylvania does not carry out involuntary executions.
Since 1999, Pennsylvania governors have signed approximately 205 execution warrants without a single execution, according to information from The Philadelphia Inquirer. There have been three executions in Pennsylvania since 1978. All three—Keith Zettlemoyer and Leon Moser in 1995; and Gary Heidnik in 1999—waived their appeal rights and volunteered to be executed.
Three-hundred forty-eight men and two women were executed in the state's electric chair between 1915 and April 2, 1962, when Elmo Smith was executed for the rape and murder of a Montgomery County girl. Smith was also the last person involuntarily executed in Pennsylvania.
Why the near non-existence of executions in Pennsylvania?
Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille vehemently complained about delay tactics and frivolous filings used by federal defenders in capital murder cases, according to a York Daily Record report from 2012.
In a written opinion in Commonwealth v. Spotz, No. 576 (April 29, 2011), Castille said, "When the families of murder victims, and other concerned citizens, ask why there is no effective death penalty in Pennsylvania, the dirty secret answer is: ask the federal court."
Castille characterized the defender's conduct as "the zealous pursuit of what is difficult to view as anything but a political cause: to impede and sabotage the death penalty in Pennsylvania."
The federal court and federal defenders might be part of the problem in Pennsylvania, but around the country the problem is simple: Support for the death penalty appears to be waning. In the last five years, six states have abolished the death penalty. In Washington, Oregon and Colorado, governors have unilaterally imposed moratoriums on executions.
Ohio, the most prolific state in terms of executions over the last five years, excluding Texas, just had a two-and-a-half-month execution moratorium imposed by a federal judge.
The most recent Gallup poll on the death penalty has support at about 60 percent, down from a high in 1994 of 80 percent. That's not to say that 60 percent is not a significant number or that 32 of 50 states with the death penalty are not a substantial majority. But, unequivocally, the death penalty is trending downward.
Yet, how do we explain the efforts in places like Utah, Missouri and Oklahoma to bring back the electric chair or firing squad. In researching my book, "The Executioner's Toll, 2010"—examining every execution in America in a single year—I was struck by the palpable anguish of the families of victims, even years after their loved ones were violently taken from them.
The mother of Clarence Threat, whose murderer, Darick Walker, was executed May 20, 2010, said she did not support the death penalty, but she did not wish to stop Walker's execution. Her response, though not vengeful, starts in the direction of the most common response from victims' families: Lethal injection is too easy. In 2010, not only did some families want retribution, they wanted revenge—a painful sort of revenge.
Speaking after his daughter's killer was executed, an angry father put it this way, "I wish my daughter could have died the way he died today. Wasn't no pain."
A mother after watching an execution: "I hope he burns 70 times in Hell."
"He should have been hung outside the courthouse," said a father unimpressed with death by lethal injection.
"I was hoping that he would have a prayer, a sign that he had been saved," said a distraught mother of a murder victim. "I think the way he went ..." She paused, breaking into tears. "It was too easy for him."
"It was like laying down and going to sleep," said the relative of a murder victim. "My nephew suffered."
Lethal injection wasn't sufficient for a member of another family, "It was too humane. I'd rather have seen him in an electric chair."
Public opinion polls have, in the past, supported the proposition that the more one knows about a specific murder or murderer, the more likely that person will support the death penalty. Saddam Hussein and Timothy McVeigh are examples that even those who otherwise oppose the death penalty can support an execution.
In 2001, when 67 percent of people said they supported the death penalty, 81 percent supported the execution of McVeigh. In 2006, when 65 percent of people said they supported the death penalty, 82 percent supported the execution of Hussein.
When murder or the death penalty touches an individual, the theoretical, moral and legal aspects of capital punishment disappear. It is personal. Victims' families are not thinking about deterrence—they're thinking about vengeance. Support for the death penalty may be on a downward slope, but it is far from being rejected. 
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George. His book, "The Executioner's Toll, 2010," was recently released by McFarland & Co. Contact him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.
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Ex-Ill. Gov. Ryan emerges from prison to fight death penalty

George Ryan, an ex-Illinois governor and now an ex-convict, says he’d like to re-engage with the cause he left behind when he went to prison in 2007 — campaigning for the end of the death penalty in the U.S., reported the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
“Americans should come to their senses,” Ryan said this week, in an hourlong interview at his kitchen table.
Newly free to speak after a year of federal supervision that followed his more than five years in prison for corruption, Ryan appeared to have recovered some of his old voice and feistiness, in contrast to the subdued figure that emerged a year ago from the federal penitentiary in Terre Haute, Ind., and ducked briefly into a Chicago halfway house.
At his home in Kankakee, south of Chicago, the Republican, 80, held forth on capital punishment, the state of American politics and the criminal justice system — though not the difficult details of his own corruption case.
He said he’d like to spend some time on the national circuit to encourage other states to follow Illinois’ lead in abolishing capital punishment. That move came in 2011 and stemmed from Ryan’s decision to clear death row in 2003. While he was treated as a champion by death penalty opponents at the time, he acknowledged some public figures now may have trouble openly associating with him.

“I’m an ex-convict,” he said. “People tend to frown on that.”
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Mangino a guest on WFMJ-TV Today Weekend

Watch my interview on WFMJ-TV Today Weekend about the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius in South Africa.  To watch the interview Click Here