Good morning and welcome to Over Easy.

According to a May 6, 2013 report from the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) that relies on data through January of this year, 30% of the executions in America take place as a result of death sentences imposed in just 15 of a total 3148 counties in the US. The study considers data from 1976 on, a period that is called the “modern era of capital punishment” (that is, post-Gregg v. Georgia).

To put it succinctly, one-third of all executions come from less than one-half of one percent of all of the counties in the United States. DPIC also reports that “Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 through to April 2013, almost 82% of the executions have been in the South.” Furthermore, even though death sentences are handed down as a result of convictions in only a handful of counties within a given state, the expense is shared by all of the taxpayers in that given state.

Each of the 37 states that still has capital punishment has only one death chamber, at the maximum security state prison. A state-by-state list is here. How much does it cost to kill someone in one of these chambers, and is it worth it, then? Consider the 2011 California study:

California

Assessment of Costs by Judge Arthur Alarcon and Prof. Paula Mitchell (2011, updated 2012)

The authors concluded that the cost of the death penalty in California has totaled over $4 billion since 1978:
$1.94 billion–Pre-Trial and Trial Costs
$925 million–Automatic Appeals and State Habeas Corpus Petitions
$775 million–Federal Habeas Corpus Appeals
$1 billion–Costs of Incarceration

The authors calculated that, if the Governor commuted the sentences of those remaining on death row to life without parole, it would result in an immediate savings of $170 million per year, with a savings of $5 billion over the next 20 years.

The 187-page California study begins by noting that California taxpayers have shelled out “roughly $4 billion” to fund “no more than 13 executions.” The study authors further point out that a severe backlog will delay more than 700 cases, for more than 20 years.

Since the money argument fails completely, what arguments are left? Surely, state-sanctioned homicide, given its immense expense, must be a deterrent, right? Actually, the data not only fails to support this theory, the opposite is true: murder rate decline occurs in regions where the death penalty is decreasing. According to a 2011 report released by the FBI:

On October 29, the U.S. Justice Department released the annual FBI Uniform Crime Report for 2011, indicating that the national murder rate dropped 1.5% from 2010. This decline occurred at a time when the use of the death penalty is also decreasing nationally. The Northeast region, which uses the death penalty the least, had the lowest murder rate of the 4 geographic regions, and saw a 6.4% further decrease in its murder rate in 2011, the largest decrease of any region. By contrast, the South, which carries out more executions than any other region, had the highest murder rate.

The top 15 counties for executions map is shown here.

Also, there have been 306 post-conviction DNA exonerations nationwide, and there is no question that innocent people have been executed in the US. Ray Krone is the 100th American to be sentenced to death and then later exonerated. To browse the profiles for DNA exonerations, go here.

Even though it is common knowledge that innocent people on death row have been exonerated through DNA test results, some prosecutors continue to try to deny access to this testing. Amazing, isn’t it, that prosecutors would push forward with a conviction and a death sentence, knowing that it may not only be wrongful, but that there is a likelihood that someone who did commit a violent crime remains free and will commit further violent crimes?

Related:

The Death Penalty in 2012: Year End Report

Defense argues against death penalty in shootings, claiming that the death penalty is arbitrary and unconstitutional.

Accused Aurora shooter James Holmes to plead not guilty by reason of insanity (Guardian)

Arkansas Republican endorses death penalty for children

Breaking News: Execution Stayed in Mississippi Willie Manning maintains his innocence. He was convicted on hair and ballistics testing. “This past week, the FBI notified the state that there were flaws in both the hair and ballistics evidence that was used to convict Manning. The FBI also agreed to do the DNA testing.”

The Crickett Rifle (“My First Rifle”) ad:

For the adults, why not mix in a little liquor?

creative coomons photo by bbum on flickr

Mountain Dew Pulls Weird Racist, Misogynist Ad

Then there’s the egregious leaked and banned Hyundai ‘suicide’ ad, where a man tries to commit suicide but is unsuccessful…

Let’s celebrate with Liquor and Fireworks, doesn’t that sound wonderful?

Good morning and welcome to Over Easy. Yesterday George Zimmerman appeared in Court and waived his right to a pretrial immunity hearing. Mr. Zimmerman is charged with second-degree murder in connection with the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, during an encounter last year in Florida. Mr. Zimmerman, who admits that he shot Martin, claims that he did so in self-defense. He is entitled to pursue both a pretrial hearing outside of a jury’s presence as well as a jury trial.

This article is cross-posted from FrederickLeatherman.com with permission, and it addresses issues of concern with George Zimmerman pursuing what is ordinarily a pretrial hearing, during the jury trial, as a potential defense strategy.

Zimmerman: The immunity hearing should not be combined with the trial

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Good evening:

The immunity hearing should not be combined with the trial for the following reasons:

A defendant has a 5th Amendment right to remain silent throughout the trial. If the Court were to combine the trial with an immunity hearing, that would put pressure on the defendant to testify during the defense case.

Depending on how well the prosecution’s case-in-chief might have gone, the defense might be tempted after the prosecution rests to rest and not put on a defense. However, because the burden of proof in the immunity hearing is on the defense, the defendant would have to testify. This is a classic example of compelling a defendant to testify and possibly incriminate himself by doing so. The 5th Amendment expressly prohibits compelling a defendant to incriminate himself.

That would not be the case if the immunity hearing were held before trial. The defendant could testify in the immunity hearing without waiving his right to remain silent at the trial.

Another reason not to combine the two is that the order of presentation differs. The State goes first at trial, but the defense goes first in an immunity hearing. Strategy can change dramatically depending on whether a party has the burden of proof. Whether a party goes first or second will affect the evidence it will present, its choice of witnesses, and the order in which the witnesses will be called.

Finally, the purpose of an immunity hearing is to identify strong self-defense cases early on and to immunize those defendants from criminal and civil liability so that they do not have to endure the psychological and emotional wear and tear of living a life in limbo while possibly in custody for a year or more before trial. Saves the expense too for all concerned. Combining the immunity hearing with the trial cancels out all those advantages.

Finally, just because a defendant has a fundamental right to an immunity hearing does not mean that he cannot waive that right as the defendant did today.

500 people are going to be summoned to court for jury service in this case and it makes no sense to go to the time, trouble and expense to do that just because the defendant wants to wait and see how jury selection and the prosecution’s presentation of its case is going before he decides whether to seek immunity.

_____________________

Related and in the news:

George Zimmerman won’t seek immunity hearing

Zimmerman waives pre-trial immunity hearing [video]

Zimmerman Forgoes Pretrial Hearing, Taking Issue of Immunity to a Jury

George Zimmerman’s Decision Leads to Summer Trial

unrelated (hat tip Elliott):

The California Dome’s New Tenants: Red-Tailed Hawks

“[f]rom this day forward, I no longer shall tinker with the machinery of death.”

-United States Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, dissenting, in an order denying Petition for certiorari, in a routine death penalty case in Texas, Callins v Collins.

Good morning and welcome to Over Easy. Yesterday in Connecticut, the State Supreme Court heard arguments “in a high-stakes case that could see Connecticut’s prospective abolition of the death penalty thrown out.”

Nearly a year ago to the day, on April 25, 2012, Connecticut Governor Dannel P. Malloy signed into law a bill that repealed the death penalty, “making his state the 17th state — the 5th in five years — to abolish capital punishment.” If the death penalty was repealed, obviously, the repeal would apply to all future convictions, hence the term “prospective” in the phrase “prospective abolition.” The legal issue is, does the law apply to people who were convicted and sentenced to death before the new law? Is it, or is it not, retroactive? I reject the following morally indefensible arguments: 1. that the change was a mere procedural change in sentencing, which would not reach back in time, and 2. the change did not affect substantive rights.

We are talking about whether people have the right to live or die. How is execution not affecting a substantive right? Furthermore, how could and why would anybody manipulate the language or anything else surrounding killing, for political gain or for lessening political losses? Unacceptable.

Connecticut Supreme Court Considers Executions After Death Penalty Repeal

On April 23, the Connecticut Supreme Court will consider whether the 11 inmates who remained on the state’s row after the legislature voted to repeal the death penalty in 2012 can still be executed. Mark Rademacher, an attorney for one of the inmates, argued that the legislature’s repeal of the death penalty demonstrated the punishment is no longer necessary and, hence, executing his client would be cruel and unusual punishment. Rademacher also asserted that the law’s prospective nature violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution because it singles out a small group of defendants for the death penalty, while dictating a life sentence for defendants in similar situations. Brian Stull, of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Capital Punishment Project, noted in his amicus brief that, “No state has executed a prisoner after repealing the death penalty. We just think it’s so important for the court to know Connecticut would be the first state to, and that’s not a stat any state wants to take.” The state has argued it was the clear intent of the legislature to only have the law apply to future cases.

I honestly feel as if we are living in a lunatic asylum, with an argument before a state’s highest Court, about whether abolished state-sponsored execution is still okay, for some people. Consider the last statement in the above blockquote. It says: “The state has argued it was the clear intent of the legislature to only have the law apply to future cases.” Legislative ‘intent’ does not matter, unless there is language in the statute, but apparently, there is language. With that language, however, is also the following reported lawmaker ‘concession:’

Assistant Public Defender Mark Redemacher argued that the death penalty, which continues to apply to the 11 men on death row, but not for any future murderers, is unconstitutional because it is arbitrary and abolition of the death penalty should apply across the board.

Lawmakers have conceded, however, that the prospective aspect was necessary in order to ensure enough votes at a time when adjudication of the two defendants in the triple murder of the Cheshire Petit family home invasion case was still raw.

This article reports today that the repeal occurred “after Joshua Komisarjevsky and Steven Hayes were sentenced to lethal injection for killing a mother and her two daughters in a 2007 home invasion in Cheshire that made national headlines.”

The horrendous home invasion triple murder occurred close in time to when the lawmakers wanted to repeal the death penalty. Considering it politically unpalatable to not have the death penalty apply to this egregious ‘poster-child-for-the-death-penalty’ triple murder, they settled for half a loaf and survived politically by crafting some incredibly fucked up language where they got caught up tinkering with the machinery of death.

While Justice Blackmun is well-known for the words framed in blockquotes, he actually said more:

[February 22, 1994]

Justice Blackmun , dissenting.

On February 23, 1994, at approximately 1:00 a.m., Bruce Edwin Callins will be executed by the State of Texas. Intravenous tubes attached to his arms will carry the instrument of death, a toxic fluid designed specifically for the purpose of killing human beings. The witnesses, standing a few feet away, will behold Callins, no longer a defendant, an appellant, or a petitioner, but a man, strapped to a gurney, and seconds away from extinction.

Within days, or perhaps hours, the memory of Callins will begin to fade. The wheels of justice will churn again, and somewhere, another jury or another judge will have the unenviable task of determining whether some human being is to live or die. We hope, of course, that the defendant whose life is at risk will be represented by competent counsel–someone who is inspired by the awareness that a less than vigorous defense truly could have fatal consequences for the defendant. We hope that the attorney will investigate all aspects of the case, follow all evidentiary and procedural rules, and appear before a judge who is still committed to the
protection of defendants’ rights–even now, as the prospect of meaningful judicial oversight has diminished.

The rest of Justice Blackmun’s short but powerful dissent is here.

Best place for updates on this topic is likely the Death Penalty Information Center.

Here is the page with ten links to news articles published in the last couple of days.

Good morning everyone! I apologize for the brevity on the links post today. I took a week away from the internet to do some spring cleaning, so I am physically exhausted!

There are a few more environment-related links I will add, but in the meantime, I hope you find these interesting.

Profits Before People: 7 of the World’s Most Irresponsible Companies Although this is from 2009, it is still an interesigng read.

The Bark Beele blues is an update that discusses conditions causing the destructive beetle to survive.

Spring 2013 forecast: Tornado season delayed, not canceled The tornado season has been mild this year, but the season is not over, and we can expect some activity.

Environment news

Clean energy progress too slow to limit global warming, warns IEA
With governments failing to promote green energy, top scientists say the drive to keep temperature rise below 2C has stalled

Endangered Animals Boat Filled With Endangered Species Hits Reef

Scientists have gleam in their eye

Ray Owings, age 90, at Pearl Harbor in March, 2013

In case you missed it:

Good morning! This is a true account of the early years in a WWII veteran’s life, as told by Ray Owings, age 90. Ray talks about the American Dream. Is such a concept possible today? I have always associated it with being able to ‘do better,’ ie live more comfortably, than our prior generations through hard work. The other part of it, in my mind, is some type of education, but others may not share this broad definition. On that topic, I’ll share a link about how teachers and immigrant students in a high school in Portland are working with the many challenges they face today:

“Imagine moving to Moscow right now, and after a month there you had to learn science in Russian,” David Douglas High teacher Nathan Owings says of the school’s immigrant students. “How would you do?”

Miracle on 135th Avenue
A Portland high school where students speak 55 languages shows Oregon how to reform education.

Recalling the American Dream

Some may call what took place over my lifetime the American Dream. You hear that term, but no one ever gets to the nitty-gritty of how that was obtained. To do that, I think it is necessary to begin at the beginning. When I look over my life, I can divide it into segments, each lasting about twenty years.

Jail art by author under creative commons: Barn at winter

Good morning everyone!

As I gather information and piece together events in my legal case, I have also been looking at how other cases in this state are handled. Although I have followed these cases over the years, on the surface nothing really struck me as odd about the recited facts. My goal was to look for patterns regarding lab testing and test result trial testimony. What I have learned is pretty shocking. As soon as I can contact sources and verify accuracy on what I have seen, I will begin a series titled Extraordinary Circumstances.

Kentucky Rules of criminal procedure are written so that there is no realistic remedy to a wrongful conviction. First of all, you’re supposed to collaterally attack all of the ‘excusable’ negligence, perjury and exculpatory evidence they hid from you and lied about, within one year of finality. That includes newly discovered evidence. That’s actually the language in the rule, as if there is a fraud par level that is a given. My own defense public lawyer delayed the case for a year, so that only leaves me with the ‘extraordinary nature’ argument in a last-ditch RCr 60.02 motion. No extraordinary circumstances case I have ever seen has been reversed, so it’s a useless rule, even though extraordinary is an understatement. The case was a persistent pattern and practice of constitutional rape.

Yesterday there was a statement on Over Easy about poverty being associated with crime. From my research, I now believe that crime is an industry created mainly for profit, and that the poor are portrayed as parasitic and dangerous. That is the reality. The system is so cancerous and so sick, I hardly know where to start. It is also far-reaching, way beyond the criminal courts. I’ll list only a few trends I will be speaking on. Look for the posts in the near future. You will not even believe what I will be telling you. That is why each thing I say will be backed with phone and document verification. I knew the system was broken, but I never dreamed of these things. Incarceration is appropriate for some, but incarceration is mostly being used for monetary and political gain and creating false illusions about a threat, when the real elephant sits outside any prison walls, harming people. Here is what’s happening and what I predict more of:

-DNA can and will be used to wrongfully convict, by lab analysts failing to explain the test and reveal that the person was excluded. That will be achieved through ‘partial’ matches, followed by: Loss of Evidence (no remedy) and, “Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the DNA doesn’t lie.” Post-conviction DNA testing for exoneration purposes will be barred, for non-death row as well as death-row inmates.

-’Expert’ witnesses will introduce science-sounding terms that are meaningless in reality but sound like gospel. No one will ask for data or literature. Years later, even though the junk science will be deemed as such, the conviction will stand because of procedural bar. (happened). Outside of the courtroom at the very same time, climate deniers will bash peer-reviewed working group data, but never mention the totally absurd junk science they pimp inside the courthouse.

-Coal mine workers, oil field workers, and workers in toxic chemical factory environments will become sick or suffer grave injuries, and workers’ comp claims will be summarily denied (already happening). It galls the courts that anyone with the likes of black lung or some other chemical pneumonia would have the temerity to ask for help, because these conditions cannot be associated with the work.

-Any time a corporation hurts someone, it’s the person’s fault. Medical malpractice cases, even if egregious, are the person’s fault too. If you get sick and die in a jail, that’s also your fault.

-No one will ever be approved for SSI, but the PTB will continue to claim that SSI is bankrupting the nation.

-Getting involved in family court is like being sent to a whole new hell where you’re most likely to lose your kids and end up in a sex offender registry with your mug shot on the internet captioned “sodomy.”

-Everyone under color of badge or working in a court, prison or other facility is immune from everything, even if the prosecutor comes to your house and shoots you in the face. Flagrant, mail order catalogs of prosecutorial misconduct will continue to be evident in each case, and the public defense bar will continue to assist, as a second prosecutor, when they’re not busy brokering wrongful conviction guilty pleas that can never be remedied.

-In addition to generating revenue, the purpose of inmates is to provide a free labor force, an open-air Eighth Amendment violation zone, and a source of blame for all of the ills of the human race, forever.

-The mentally ill and the poor will continue to be locked up because they are poor, and they have no political clout. The best place to find drugs on the outside will continue to be in the white, upper-class neighborhoods and legal upper-class doctors.

I’ll stop there and get to news. At this point, just to add, I believe all of the state crime labs should be closed today and not open until they are subject to CLIA. I also support mandatory minimums for crime lab personell involved in fraud or false testimony. The wrongly convicted should be paid accordingly.

Crime lab head loses post.

Kentucky crime lab is still bogus and the analysts continue to lie under oath.

Amherst crime lab chemist indicted.

‘Just a Theory’: 7 Misused Science Words

note: hat tip to msmolly for catching an earlier spelling error in the title of this post!