Kentucky senate votes to ban the death penalty for offenders with certain mental illness

The Kentucky Senate passed a bill that would ban the death penalty on individuals diagnosed with specific mental illnesses, reported Jurist.

Under House Bill 269, defendants who show a documented history of mental illness at the time of the offense are immune from capital punishment. The defendant must show a diagnosis from a mental health professional. The mental illnesses included are schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, and delusional disorder.

The bill’s primary sponsor is State Representative Chad McCoy. The Kentucky House of Representatives passed the bill by a 76 to 19 vote on February 9. The bill was then approved by a 25 to 9 vote in the Republican majority Senate on Friday.

This bill comes in the midst of many other state actions regarding the death penalty. In 2021, Ohio passed House Bill 136, which abolished capital punishment for those with the same mental illnesses listed in the Kentucky bill. Also in 2021, Kentucky became the twenty-third state and the first Southern state to ban the death penalty completely. Currently, 27 states still practice capital punishment.

The bill will now be sent to Governor Andy Beshear.

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Bookman: The Sentencing of Lee Harvey Oswald

Marc Bookman executive Director of The Atlantic Center for Capital Representation writes in "The Practical Lawyer":

President John Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald "never had a trial, a sentence or appeal.  A look back at what might have been is a reminder of how arbitrary an d capricious capital punishment is." What would have Oswald's trial have look like?

Bookman's article looks a the potential impact that mitigation may have played in Oswald's sentence had he been convicted and whether or not Oswald would have been around long enough to benefit from the United State Supreme Court's 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia. 

To read more CLICK HERE

Adverse childhood experiences have an impact on capital sentencing

Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) are potentially traumatic events that occur from birth to age 17. A new study examined the effect of ACEs on jurors' sentencing decisions in hypothetical death penalty cases. The study found that defense testimony elicited jurors' leniency, largely through their responses to ACE evidence, reported the Justice Quarterly.

The study, by researchers at Minnesota State University (MSU), Mankato and St. Edwards University, appears in Justice Quarterly, a publication of the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.

"The role of adverse childhood experiences in death penalty trials merits special attention," says Tyler J. Vaughan, associate professor of criminal justice at MSU, Mankato, who led the study. "Though a significant body of research has examined the impact of mitigating evidence and the role of culpability, as well as anger, on sentencing decisions, ACE evidence is unique because it can elicit different emotional responses from jurors."

Criminologists are increasingly focusing on ACEs as risk factors for criminal and violent behavior. Traumatic childhood events—childhood maltreatment; emotional, physical, and sexual abuse; emotional and physical neglect; exposure to violence, mental illness, and substance abuse; and parents' abandonment, incarceration, or separation—have been found to have profound consequences for future criminal behavior. Although research on defendants in death penalty trials and death row inmates is limited, childhood abuse and neglect is common in this group.

In this study, researchers recruited nearly 1,500 participants to take part in mock juror tasks in which defendants' exposure to ACEs as mitigating evidence was manipulated. Participants were similar demographically to jurors in the Capital Jury Project (a consortium of university-based studies on jurors' decision making in U.S. death penalty cases): primarily non-Hispanic and female and with an average age of 37.

Participants were given several pieces of information: 1) vignettes of death penalty trials featuring one of four hypothetical crimes (murder of police, murder of children, murder of multiple victims, murder in the course of a robbery); 2) details of defendants' criminal history and ACEs (a control group did not receive the ACE information); 3) testimony by expert witnesses about the relationship between childhood adversity and decreased ability to reason; 4) photos of the defendants, some of whom were Black and some of whom were white.

Participants who received information about defendants' ACEs were 35% to 50% less likely to vote for the death penalty than participants who were not given that information, with even steeper reductions in the likelihood of sentencing to death when the hypothetical defendant was exposed to more childhood adversity. Sentencing decisions were affected by estimations of blameworthiness, future dangerousness, and sympathy, the study found.

"Practically speaking, our findings suggest that investigating ACEs and presenting this evidence are critical in eliciting leniency in death penalty cases," notes Lisa Bell Holleran, assistant professor of criminal justice at St. Edwards University, who co-authored the study. "They also have implications for the constitutionality of capital punishment in cases where the defense presents ACEs as mitigating evidence."

Specifically, to fulfill the Supreme Court's mandate to narrow the application of the death penalty to the most culpable defendants, the authors argue, jurors need more guidance in how to use mitigating evidence within the confines of a meaningful culpability inquiry. "Although we found some indication that mock jurors consider culpability in deciding the appropriate sentence, we found sympathy to be far more important," Holleran says.

Because the study is based on a simulation, the validity and generalizability of its findings are limited, the authors note. Also, the study's participants differed in several ways from jurors in actual death penalty trials, including that they received less evidence and testimony, and that they made their sentencing decisions alone.

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Why is violent crime on the rise?

 From The New York Times:

What explains the crime wave? There is no fully satisfying answer, but experts point to several plausible partial explanations. They include: Social isolation and frustration caused by the pandemic. A sense of lawlessness stemming from police violence (like the murder of George Floyd). Police officers’ timidity in response to recent criticism of them. And a rise in gun sales during the pandemic.

Yet the crime wave seems both too broad and too distinctly American for any one of these factors to be a tidy explanation.

Gun crime isn’t the only kind of violent crime that is rising, for example. Nor are the crime increases limited to places where police brutality has been worst. As for the pandemic, if it were the only cause, you would expect crime to have surged in many countries. Instead, it has held fairly steady in Britain, Canada, France, Japan and elsewhere.

The closest thing that I have heard to a persuasive answer comes from history. Criminologists and historians who have studied past crime waves — like Gary LaFree, Richard Rosenfeld and Randolph Roth — point out that they often occur when people are feeling frustrated with society, government and their fellow citizens. This frustration can feed a breakdown in societal norms and a rise in what the sociologist Émile Durkheim called “anomie.”

‘Fellow feeling’

Roth, looking at homicide rates in the U.S. and Western Europe over the past 400 years, argues that crime tends to increase if people lose trust in society’s institutions and basic fairness. When empathy for other citizens — or “fellow feeling,” as Roth and others call it — declines and anomie rises, crime also rises. The American crime increases of the 1960s and ’70s were a good example, criminologists say.

Most citizens do not commit crimes, of course. But social alienation makes some people more willing to break the rules and act violently. A broader sense of disorder can create a so-called moral holiday, as The Atlantic’s Graeme Wood has written.

When I was talking about this idea with colleagues yesterday, German Lopez — who’s written about the crime wave in this newsletter — pointed out that the anomie theory can feel unsatisfying because it is ephemeral and unprovable. But it also fits the facts better than any alternative, German added.

By many measures, Americans are feeling frustrated with their government, their economy and their fellow citizens. Nearly 80 percent are dissatisfied with the country’s direction, according to Gallup. People spend hours screaming at one another on social media. Many Americans consider people with opposing political ideas to be so wrong that they don’t deserve the right to express their views. Polls also show an alarming degree of skepticism about democracy and openness to political violence.

Along with these signs of alienation, a wide range of behavior has deteriorated. Alcohol abuse and drug overdoses have increased. Americans’ blood pressure is up, and measures of mental health are down. Vehicle crashes have surged.

In each of these cases, the pandemic seems to be playing a role: The trends either began or accelerated shortly after Covid overwhelmed daily life in the spring of 2020. But the pandemic appears to be only part of the story. This country’s recent dysfunction is bigger than Covid. It is a dark new form of American exceptionalism. To read more CLICK HERE

Thiel College-Death Penalty

Death Penalty Comment No. 4

The murder rate has risen about 30 percent over the last year.  The death penalty has been in decline in recent years with fewer executions and fewer death sentences.  Do you think the decline in the death penalty is influencing the rise in murder?  Explain you opinion.

Mangino appears on Court TV to discuss trial of Billy Ray Turner

Watch my interview on Court TV with Ashley Willcott discussing the trial of Billy Ray Turner convicted of murdering former NBA player Lorenzen Wright.

To watch the interview CLICK HERE

Newest '2nd Amendment' trend--eliminate permits for concealed carry

 Most adults and of-age teens in the United States go through the same process of getting licensed to drive: classroom or online instruction, as many as 100 hours of practice behind the wheel, and a skills test.

Far fewer people have that experience when seeking a license to carry concealed weapons, reports the Washington Post.

Recently Ohio became the 23rd state to enact a law eliminating permits as a requirement for concealed carry. The Buckeye State closely followed Alabama, where Gov. Kay Ivey signed a similar law on March 10.

The back-to-back wins for gun-rights advocates who want to see fewer restrictions on the Second Amendment signal how partisan divides and relentless activism at the state level are significantly reshaping the landscape around gun possession.

“This is the latest front in the battle over gun rights in America,” said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the University of California at Los Angeles and an expert in gun policy and the Second Amendment. Winkler sees a broader takeaway in the changes to Alabama and Ohio’s gun laws.

 “The lesson is: It’s coming to you,” Winkler said. “It’s a rising tide of reform, and it’s a wave we’ve seen before.”

Seventeen of the 23 states that allow permitless carry passed their laws in the past seven years. By contrast, concealed carry wasn’t even legal in every state until 2013, when Illinois lifted its longtime ban decades after most other states.

The push to end restrictions on concealed carry is reminiscent of one made by lobbyists and gun rights activists 30 years ago with “shall issue” permitting. States adopted laws that held authorizing agencies shall issue concealed-carry permits to anyone who meets the basic requirements set by the state, such as completing a training course or passing a background check — a shift that rapidly expanded who could carry a concealed weapon.

Before the advent of “shall issue” permitting, most states would let individuals concealed carry only if licensed; the permits, Winkler said, were hard to get and required applicants to demonstrate a justification for carrying a concealed firearm.

“The NRA has been incredibly effective in loosening gun laws at the state level and have completely transformed how individuals can carry guns in public since the 1980s,” Winkler said in reference to the National Rifle Association.

Winkler said energy for gun control that often swells after shooting incidents — including calls for change at the federal level — but that such energy obscures the on-the-ground reality.

“Nothing has changed since Newtown,” Winkler said, referring to the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., that killed 27 people, including 20 first-graders. “If you think that [it has], you’re looking in the wrong place: The states are a hotbed of activity of gun reform these days, and it’s mostly gun-rights advocates that are winning the battles.”

The primary group that lobbied for Ohio’s permitless carry law was the grass-roots Buckeye Firearms Association. Executive Director Dean Rieck, in a recent podcast episode, described its strategy as “moving the Overton window” from a place where the public was largely wary of anyone with a gun to a place where opponents welcomed licensing laws.

 “You get to the point where there’s enough trust to pass a law like this,” Rieck told The Washington Post in an interview. “I think we’ll find the dire predictions in passing this law don’t come true.”

Opponents of permitless carry argue that the law decreases public safety by eliminating the requirements attached to permits, such as background checks, safety training and, in Ohio, an application through a local sheriff’s office.

Gary Wolske, president of the Fraternal Order of Police of Ohio, the state’s largest police union, said the FOP believes in the right to carry a weapon — but also in background checks.

“Last year, an estimated 2,000 were denied permits,” Wolske said of Ohio concealed carry applicants. “But going forward, when this becomes law, there’s no more requirements for anything. You don’t have to know how to turn on the safety, how to carry your weapon or even know which end of the gun goes ‘bang.’ ”

Anyone who purchases a gun from a federally licensed firearms dealer is vetted through the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which screens for disqualifications such as felony convictions, involuntary commitment to a mental health facility or dishonorable military discharge.

But the databases on which the government relies are often flawed, outdated or incomplete; such was the case in the 2017 massacre in Texas at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs. The gunman, who killed 26 people and injured nearly two dozen others, was never flagged in the NICS because the Air Force repeatedly failed to submit records that would have disqualified him from purchasing three of the four weapons he used in the rampage.

Rieck argued that licensing laws end up stopping only law-abiding citizens from fully exercising their Second Amendment rights, since lawbreakers won’t submit to restrictions whether they exist or not.

“The kind of people who have criminal intent or have a record that would prevent them from carrying a firearm aren’t going to go to a sheriff’s office and get a background check,” he said. “It’s sort of self-selecting.”

Training is another issue. While Rieck said groups like his advocate for people to get as much training as they can, they don’t want training to be a barrier.

“There’s a difference between recommending training and mandating training,” he said.

Jake Pelletier, who owns Raven Firearms Training in New Hampshire with his wife, Crystal, offered a comparison he has heard others make in states that make training a hard-and-fast requirement of concealed carry: “I’ve heard it put that it’s like saying you can exercise your right to free speech as long as you take a communications course.’”

At the same time, the Pelletiers said it’s easy for someone to underestimate the training needed to safely use a gun in a defensive situation.

“They have no idea how difficult it is to use your weapon in a use-of-force situation for defense safely, legally and while avoiding collateral damage,” Jake Pelletier said. He estimated that beginners need a baseline of roughly 32 hours of high-quality training.

“We stress to our clients, if you put out a round, you own that round,” Crystal Pelletier added. “That’s not easy to do if you haven’t trained — especially if you haven’t trained.”

Although New Hampshire hasn’t required concealed-carry permits since 2017, the Pelletiers saw an uptick in customers seeking safety classes following protests and riots that emerged in parts of the country following George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis in 2020.

Despite public polling that indicates a majority of Americans favor more gun control, gun-control advocates have been losing ground for years because of activism at the state level in part because of increased political polarization, according to Sean Holihan, state legislative director for Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

The number of states where the legislative chambers and the governorship were carried by different parties has shrunk.

“Increasingly, you’re seeing a trifecta and the needs of the most active members of the party are being met,” Holihan said.

Both Ohio and Alabama state houses and governorships are controlled by Republicans overwhelmingly along partisan lines; in Ohio, the bill didn’t earn a single vote from Democrats in either chamber.

Winkler, the UCLA law professor, said a hidden factor driving looser gun laws is partisan gerrymandering.

“In an environment where there are very safe seats, you get candidates who, with an issue like gun control, try to outextreme the other candidate,” he said. “And in the Republican Party, it’s been especially pronounced; you don’t want your opponents to say you’re soft on guns, because that hurts you in the primary.”

Gun-rights advocates commonly invoke crime reduction and self-defense in their arguments, but Winkler said that loosening restrictions has shown to be driven more by politics than public safety. The data, he notes, is largely inconclusive.

Researchers have sparred for years over the question of whether easing gun restrictions lessens crime or fuels it. A 2021 analysis by The Washington Post’s Fact Checker found states with looser concealed-carry laws had a higher homicide rate on average during a recent five-year period than the eight states with stricter permit laws — and that the role looser laws played in higher crime rates — if any — was unclear.

With a midterm election eight months away and major election year in 2024, experts expect more laws easing gun restrictions to pass. Already, bills to allow permitless carry are active in Indiana and Florida.

Holihan expects the expansion to stop after the remaining Republican-controlled states enact permitless carry.

“We’ll have states with moderate-to strong gun control police along the West Coast and some Great Lakes states, and other states where it’s much easier to get and carry a gun, they’ll move on to other issues like stand-your-ground,” Holihan said.

The result, he said, will be a picture with which the country is already familiar: two Americas, and one deep ideological divide.