Crim Prof blog has a new link-rich post about the Ohio death penalty study that found racial bias in the state's application of the death penalty. TChris's post on the study from Saturday is here.

Death Penalty Information Center sums up the findings:

• Offenders facing a death penalty charge for killing a white person were twice as likely to go to death row than if they had killed a black victim. Death sentences were handed down in 18% of cases where the victims were white, compared with 8.5% of cases where victims were black.

• Nearly 1/2 of the 1,936 capital punishment cases ended with a plea bargain. That includes 131 cases in which the crime involved two or more victims; 25 people had killed at least 3 victims.

• In Cuyahoga County, a Democratic stronghold, just 8% of offenders charged with a capital crime received a death sentence. In conservative Hamilton County, 43% of capital offenders ended up on death row.

by TChris

Gratitude is owed to the AP for its careful analysis of death penalty cases in Ohio. Here's the result in summation:

Ohio's death penalty has been inconsistently applied since it was enacted in 1981, according to a first-ever analysis by The Associated Press. Race, the extensive use of plea bargains and even where a crime has been committed all play a role in who is sentenced to death.

Race of the victim seems to play a huge role in the administration of the death penalty in Ohio.

For the second time since 2003, a Puerto Rico jury has rejected the death penalty in a federal case. The New York Times reports:

A 12-member jury decided that Hernando Medina Villegas, 24, and Lorenzo Catalan Roman, 25, will face life imprisonment for shooting and killing a security guard while robbing an armored truck on March 27, 2002. If the jury had decided for the death penalty, it would have been the first time in nearly 80 years that someone charged in Puerto Rico would have faced execution.

You would think the feds would have learned their lesson in 2003 when Ashcroft intervened in a Puerto Rico case to demand that the death penalty be sought. Not only didn't the jury return a death verdict, it acquitted the two defendants of the underlying crime. As I said then:

The evidence was he is legally sane because he understood the consequences of his actions, but he is mentally ill, suffering from schizophrenia and paranoia. He apologized to the jury.

I want to apologize for the attack that occurred. I felt that my life was in jeopardy, and I had no other options. I also want to ask you for forgiveness," Akbar told the jury before it deliberated in the sentencing phase.

The jury rejected life without the possibility of parole, and sentenced Sgt. Hasan Akbar to death. The media's principal comment: His apology wasn't under oath. Only in America. And people wonder why our international image has lost its luster.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has released a new report on the death penalty.

The number of people sentenced to death last year fell to the lowest level since the Supreme Court reinstated the penalty in 1976.

There were 125 people sent to death row in 2004, down from 144 the previous year and the sixth consecutive annual decline, according to figures compiled by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. In 1998, 300 people received death sentences.

According to a lawyer for the group, one of the reasons for the decline is the increasing number of DNA exonerations. People now realize mistakes are made, and death is permanent. Others cite Supreme Court decisions banning the death penalty for certain offenders:

The Virginia Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence of John Muhammad, the elder of pair convicted in the 2003 "sniper" attacks. There were two good arguments in the case, but the Court ruled against both:

The court brushed aside arguments that Muhammad could not be sentenced to death under state law because he was not the triggerman. And it rejected claims that the post-Sept. 11 terrorism law under which he was prosecuted is unconstitutionally vague.

It was close on the triggerman argument though:

The Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the conviction based on the terrorism law but split 4-3 in upholding the conviction under the triggerman rule. The court's majority found that even if Muhammad's teenage accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, pulled the trigger, Muhammad was eligible for the death penalty as an "immediate perpetrator" of slaying.

Background on the triggerman argument is here, and the previously untested terrorism law here.

by TChris

Richard Boyde will receive a new sentencing hearing as the result of a Ninth Circuit decision yesterday. Boyde had been sentenced to death. The court of appeals concluded that his lawyer failed to provide effective assistance when he compared Boyde to Charles Manson, a comparison that probably didn't endear Boyde to the jurors.

The court said the defense lawyer also failed to present evidence that Boyde was repeatedly and severely beaten and whipped by both his mother and his stepfather and that his stepsisters were sexually abused.

More on the case here. The court's decision is here (pdf).

Gary Hart II is one of the 72 juvenile offenders whose life was spared by the Supreme Court decision last month banning the execution of those under 18 at the time of their crime as cruel and unusual punishment. Here's what he has to say about it, beginnng with the phone call from his lawyers.

My new sentence is life without any chance of parole, this sentence was never my goal but I can’t help smiling over the life part. The Simmons ruling saved 72 men nationwide, but in reality the decision saved many more. There are teenagers in jail who won’t face capital punishment, former death row inmates not counted in the 72 because their sentence or conviction had been recently overturned and countless numbers of reckless teenage boys who haven’t committed their crimes yet. Five judges saved all of us. What a difference a day makes!

Lisa Thomas is walking - from Alabama to Washington D.C. Today she reached North Carolina, 925 miles so far.

Ms. Thomas is walking to end the death penalty and hunger. She's being followed by a friend in a van, covered with signs referring to both. Project Hope has begun a blog to follow her journey.

Lisa Thomas, 52, the manager of a food bank in Brewton, Ala., has found both hospitality and hostility on her trip, and says she was almost run down by a pick-up truck in South Carolina, but she says she is continuing on her journey to try to make a difference.

“Thousands are seeing my signs,” she said from her cell phone on Route 29 near the North Carolina-South Carolina border today. “If it makes no more difference than that, it makes a difference.”

Tuesday is the tenth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. 168 people died. Over 500 were injured. Meet Budd Welch, father of Julie Welch, who lost her life that day:

Emmett "Bud" Welch, 65, whose daughter, Julie Marie, died in the blast, has found his own way to deal with the pain. The bombing turned Welch, a former gas station owner, into an international crusader against the death penalty and human rights violations.

Welch has spoken about human rights in London, Rome, Kenya and dozens of other places all over the world. "For 11 months after the bombing, I dealt with my situation by drinking. I'd go to the bomb site two or three times a day, with my head splitting from a hangover," Welch said. "Finally, one day, I said, "What are you doing to change your life?'

"I remembered how Julie was so adamantly opposed to the death penalty. She felt so strongly, she started an Amnesty International chapter in her high school at age 16."

The Texas Senate today approved a law (S.B. 60) that would require capital juries to be advised that if they did not return a death sentence, the defendant would be required to serve life with no parole. Life with parole would no longer be an option.

Under current law, Texas juries that find a guilty a verdict in a capital murder case can decide whether the defendant receives the death penalty or a life term with the possibility for parole. Under the bill, the two options would be execution by lethal injection or life in prison without parole.

This is good news because it is expected that fewer jurors would vote for death if they know LWOP was the only other option and the killer would never be released. Just last week the bill looked like it was on life-support, this is quite a victory.

Some editorials supporting LWOP are
here and here.

A new report by the University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine, published in The Lancet, the prestigious British medical journal, raises serious concerns that prisoners being executed likely are conscious after being administered the lethal drug cocktail that kills them. In the study, the group analyzed toxicology results from 49 executions:

The practice of lethal injection for execution perverts the tools of medicine and the trust the public has in drugs and clinical protocols. Although executioners use an anesthetic, the current dosages and means of administration do not assure that inmates are senseless to pain, particularly because inmates are not monitored for level of consciousness or depth of anesthesia,” said Leonidas G. Koniaris, M.D., associate professor of clinical surgery, cell biology and anatomy, and lead author of the letter.

“We found that 43 of 49 executed inmates had post-mortem blood anesthesia levels below that required for surgery, while 21 of those inmates had levels that were consistent with awareness,” said Teresa Zimmers, Ph.D., research assistant professor of surgery who analyzed the data for the research.