Tag: death penalty (page 7)

The New Jersey Senate will vote Thursday on a bill to abolish the state's death penalty.

New Jersey is set to consider becoming the first state to abolish the death penalty legislatively since capital punishment was reinstated 31 years ago. A Senate committee is slated Thursday to consider replacing the death penalty with life imprisonment without parole.

The initiative stems from a January report from a special commission appointed by the Legislature. The panel determined New Jersey’s death penalty costs taxpayers more than paying for prisoners to serve life terms and concluded there was no evidence the death penalty deters people from committing murders.

“There is increasing evidence that the death penalty is inconsistent with evolving standards of decency,” the report said.

Will it happen? It's possible. Both Gov. Jon Corzine and the leaders of both houses in the legislature oppose the death penalty.

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The Supreme Court today threw out three Texas death sentences.

The cases all stem from jury instructions that Texas hasn't used since 1991. Under those rules, courts have found that jurors were not allowed to give sufficient weight to factors that might cause them to impose a life sentence instead of death.

The cases were decided by a 5-4 majority, with Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Anthony Kennedy, David Souter and John Paul Stevens voting to overturn the sentences.

Via How Appealing:

Lyle Denniston has this post at "SCOTUSblog." You can access the opinion in Smith v. Texas, No. 05-11304, here and the oral argument transcript here. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy issued the majority opinion in a case that divided the U.S. Supreme Court 5-4.

The Court today also issued decisions in two other death penalty cases that were orally argued together (access the transcript here): Abdul-Kabir v. Quarterman, No. 05-11284 (opinion here) and Brewer v. Quarterman, No. 05-11287 (opinion here).

In South Dakota's first death penalty case with a female defendant, a jury yesterday voted for life in prison without parole over a death sentence.

A jury on Wednesday spared the life of a woman who killed an acquaintance and hacked up her body with a chainsaw, sentencing her to life in prison without parole.

The victim's mother told the defendant's mother:

"We pray for you every day asking that God may touch your heart, that you may come to know his love and that you repent of your sins and seek God's forgiveness," she said.

Dee VanderGiesen told Wright's mother, Carolyn Tucker: "We both have lost our daughters. One to death and the other to prison time for as long as she lives. May God's grace be shown to you at this time of pain in your life."

The prosecution's facts:

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San Quentin prison houses 600 death row inmates, more than any other prison in the country. State legislators were surprised during a visit last month to learn that construction is almost complete on a new death chamber.

Staff members with the California Legislative Analyst's Office were made aware of the project to build a lethal injection chamber during a visit to the prison Tuesday, according to Dan Carson, director of the office's criminal justice section. The news spread Thursday to legislators after it was discussed at an oversight hearing for the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's budget.

Legislative analyst staffers were "surprised" to learn the construction had started, Carson said, adding the project is "very far along."

The cost: $399,000. The figure is important because had it been $400,000., approval would have been required.

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The Chicago Tribune has a great editorial today on why the death penalty should be abolished. The chief reasons:

• Arbitrary decisions as to whom it's applied
• Racial disparity in its application
• The increasing number of wrongfully convicted inmates, as revealed by DNA tests conducted after their trials

Who gets a sentence of life and who gets death is often a matter of random luck, of politics, of geography, even a matter of racism. Mistakes can occur at every level of the process.

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Responding to a federal court opinion last week finding California's death penalty procedures woefully inadequate, Gov. Arnold Schwarznegger is promising to fix them in 30 days.

Sorry, Arnie. That's not good enough. You need to suspend them until (if ever) they are fixed, like Jeb Bush did.

Doctors are now weighing in on the botched Florida execution of Angel Nieves Diaz (background here and here.)

They believe he died a slow, agonizing death, which one equates to torture.

``It really sounds like he was tortured to death,'' said Jonathan Groner, associate professor of surgery at the Ohio State Medical School, who has written several articles on lethal injection. ``My impression is that it would cause an extreme amount of pain.''

The 'Bali Nine' are learning their fate in Bali this week. Two have been sentenced to death. The rest, who were mules, were sentenced to life imprisonment. Renee Lawrence cooperated with authorites and prosecutors asked for her to receive a 20 year sentence. The judges sentenced her to life as well.

Boycott Bali. A country that sentences teens with no prior record to life in prison and young adults to death is a country with an inhumane system of justice that does not deserve to have tourists -- or your dollars.

If we needed only one reason to support John Kerry, this might be it. For the first time since 1992, the Democratic Party Platform will not contain an endorsement of the death penalty. John Nichols writes:

Simply put, on the question of execution, John Kerry is a very different Democrat from Bill Clinton and Al Gore. Clinton and Gore, while surely aware that capital punishment is an ineffective and racially and economically biased vehicle for fighting crime, were willing to embrace it as a political tool. Clinton even rushed back to Arkansas during the 1992 campaign to oversee the execution of a mentally retarded inmate. With Clinton and Gore steering the party's policies, Democratic platforms endorsed capital punishment. But Clinton and Gore are no longer at the helm. And as of tonight, the party will no longer be on record as supporting the death penalty. Asked about the removal of the pro-capital punishment language, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who chairs the committee that drafted the document, explained that "it's a reflection of John Kerry."

As we've reported several times, including here , John Kerry is opposed to the death penalty for all but foeign terrorists--and that exception arose after 9-11. Nichols expands on his position, writing:

Kerry opposes the execution of juveniles, supports greater access to DNA testing for death row inmates, and argues that studies "reveal serious questions, racial bias, and deep disparities in the way the death penalty is applied." Kerry was a co-sponsor of the National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2001 and of the National Death Penalty Moratorium Act of 2003. "I know something about killing," Kerry says, referring to his service in Vietnam as a swift boat commander. "I don't like killing. That's just a personal belief I have."

Kerry is a former prosecutor. We have friends that worked as assistants when he was the DA in Boston. Rikki Klieman, the great criminal defense attorney and NBC legal analyst for one. She raves about Kerry as a prosecutor. She writes about him in her book, Fairy Tales Can Come True.

John Kerry has said he could never be a defense attorney. His heart lies with the prosecution. We don't mind that at all since he was one of those rare prosecutors that cared about doing justice more than his office's win/loss record.