The latest Texecution news: A state court judge in Texas has given the green light to the execution of James Lee Clark who is mildly retarded:

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed James Lee Clark's execution in November 2002 days before he was scheduled to die. They wanted a judge to review claims by Clark's attorneys that he is mentally retarded. A Supreme Court ruling [ Atkins v. Virginia ] bars the execution of mentally retarded inmates.

District Judge Lee Gabriel ruled Thursday if Clark is mildly retarded, he is not so impaired that he can be exempted from the death penalty.

[link via Paper Chase]

As we await the Virginia jury's verdict on whether John Muhammad will be sentenced to life in prison or death, we thought we'd point out this excellent series by investigative journalist Alan Berlow at American Radio Networks called Deadly Decisions about how jurors decide who lives or dies. Using real life cases, the report is divided into in three parts, Juror Responsibility, Juror Confusion and Juror Bias. You can choose to read or listen to the reports.

Alan Berlow provides his thoughts on the project here.

Whether or not one supports the death penalty, we like to assume that when the state is trying to take a person's life, that individual will get a fair trial by a jury. What the Capital Jury Project's research and my own interviews with capital jurors suggest is that this is often not the case.

The long awaited Illiniois death penalty reform law took effect today after being passed by the Illinois legislature.

Among other things, the new Illinois law would ban the execution of anyone judged to be mentally retarded and requires prosecutors disclose promises made to witnesses.

The new law also would give defendants new protections such as access to all evidence favorable to them, allow judges to rule out the death penalty in cases reliant on a single witness or police informant, and give the state's Supreme Court justices powers to overturn a death penalty conviction for reasons other than procedural errors.

Ill. Governor Rod Blagojevich said he will maintain the moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois until it can be shown that the new reforms work.

From the NACDP:

The Texas Defender Service and the Equal Justice Center released their second report last week on the state's implementation of the Fair Defense Act, passed by the Legislature in 2001. The act was designed to strengthen the state's tarnished criminal justice system by strengthening the requirements for fair and prompt assignment of qualified defense counsel to poor criminal defendants in capital cases.

But according to the report, two years after passing the act, the state still has more work to do to achieve those goals. Among the findings: None of the state's nine administrative judicial regions have "performance standards" to evaluate which attorneys are qualified for death penalty appointments; many counties have yet to ensure that defendants have prompt access to an attorney; and many counties have yet to allot enough money to pay for defense investigators and experts.

Read the whole story here.

The fate of accused sniper suspect John Muhammad is now in the hands of the jury. His lawyers argued reasonable doubt today, but given the amount of circumstantial evidence against him, and the Judge's ruling that the terrorism charge supports the death penalty regardless of whether the state proved Muhammad pulled the trigger, the outcome of the guilt-innocence phase of the trial is fairly predictable. If a guilty verdict comes in, the case will move to the sentencing trial, in which the prosecutors will seek the death penalty for Muhammad.

This new report, Broken Justice: The Death Penalty in Virginia on the unfairness of the Virginia death penalty system, and the need for sweeping reforms, should give everyone great pause.

According to the study, prosecutorial misconduct and incompetent counsel, combined with arbitrary restrictions on presenting evidence and fixing trial mistakes, have created a flawed system that can convict innocent people and deprive others of a fair hearing.

"In Virginia, whether or not you are sentenced to death has little to do with the crime, and everything to do with your race, where you live, and who prosecutes your case," said John Whitehead, Executive Director of the Rutherford Institute. "This is in direct contradiction to America’s fundamental faith in ‘blind’ justice."

It troubles us that Attorney General John Ashcroft hand-picked Virginia over Maryland and other jurisdictions as the venue for the first trial for Muhammad and Malvo. He picked Virginia because a jury in that state was most likely to sentence the pair to death, in complete disregard of the unfairness of the death penalty system in the state. As we opined here almost exactly one year ago,

Justice occurs when we provide the accused with a fair trial, competent counsel and strict adherence to their consitutional rights. Injustice occurs when we allow passion and prejudice to override the guarantees of fairness our system provides to even the worst offender among us.

John Ashcroft is not running the Department of Justice but a Department of Injustice.

Our hat is off to Turkey which has formally abolished the death penalty during peacetime. From the press release from the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly:

Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly President Peter Schieder and the Secretary General of the Organisation, Walter Schwimmer, today welcomed Turkey’s formal deposition of the ratification instruments for Protocol No. 6 to the European Convention on Human Rights, abolishing the death penalty in peacetime, as a milestone on Europe’s path towards a death penalty-free continent.

A death penalty free-continent is what we need. We'll even settle for a moratorium now and abolition in the not-distant future. We are among the last vestiges of the civilized world that still condones state-sanctioned murder. It's time to put a stop to it.

Good news on the death penalty front....from the Criminal Justice Reform Education Fund:

The DOJ Bureau of Justice Statistics published its annual Capital Punishment
report for 2002. The report can be found here.

Although there was an increase in the number of executions last in 2002, the number of death sentences continued to decline. This demonstrates the increasing skepticism with capital punishement, as highlighted on page 8:

"The 159 admissions to death row in 2002 marked a further decline from the 163 admissions recorded in 2001, and represented the smallest number received in a year since 44 persons were admitted in 1973. Between 1994 and 2000, in contrast, an average of 297 inmates per year were admitted."

The Seattle Times reports that foregoing the death penalty and accepting a guilty plea to a life sentence without the possibility of parole in the Green River killer case may have saved King County almost $16 million:

King County has spent approximately $10.9 million investigating, prosecuting and defending Gary L. Ridgway, the Green River killer, since his arrest in 2001 through September. The county had projected spending an additional $16 million through the end of 2005, if the case went to trial. On Wednesday, Ridgway finalized a plea deal with prosecutors by pleading guilty to 48 counts of murder in exchange for being spared the death penalty.

The paper today also features an eloquent commentary by Whatcom County Superior Court Judge David A Nichols on why the plea deal was a foregone --and the only just--conclusion--and why the death penalty should be abolished in Washington. Here's a portion:

Bump and Update: Here's the latest:

This just in via e-mail from the ACLU:

We are pleased to report a significant victory in the Illinois Senate! A few hours ago, the Illinois Senate overrode Governor Blagojevich’s amendatory veto of Senate Bill 472, threatening to undermine critical reform of the failed and discredited death penalty system in Illinois. The vote on the override motion was 58 in favor, 0 opposed and 1 not voting – a sweeping victory. We thank all the members of the Action Alert Team who called their Senators and urged them to vote for this important legislation.

Senate Bill 472 includes many of the proposals recommended by the Governor's Commission on Capital Punishment, including: compelling police to produce exculpatory information in homicide cases; mandating a pre-trial process to test the veracity of "informant" or "jailhouse snitch" testimony; and, banning the execution of persons who are mentally ill. After the session, Governor Blagojevich used his amendatory veto authority to delete a provision that created a penalty for false testimony by police officers in homicide cases.

Later this evening, we anticipate that the Senate also will give overwhelming approval to an amendment to House Bill 576 – language that forms an agreement addressing the Governor’s concerns and those expressed by law enforcement about Senate Bill 472. Under the agreement, the hearings to decide whether a police officer charged with having lied during death penalty cases now will involve three state agencies, rather than the one agency originally proposed in Senate Bill 472.

For more on the controversy between the Governor and the legislature on the bill, go here. For more details on the bill passed by both houses of the state legislature, go here.

As Jeb Bush is pushing for life in the Terri Schiavo case, we thought we'd post this link to a chart showing the list of death warrants/executions signed by Jeb Bush.

For more on Jeb Bush's death record, go here.

[We're still up in the air on the Schiavo case. We're just using it as an example of Bush's hypocrisy. We think the right-to-lifers are phonies for not trying to save every life--including those of the condemned on death row]

The AP reports:

Legal experts say the plea bargain with the Green River Killer raises a thorny question: If the state of Washington is not going to execute someone who has confessed to murdering 48 people, how can it ever again put anyone to death?

It is a question of simple fairness: Under state law, the Washington state Supreme Court is required to review every death sentence handed out, and must consider whether the sentence "is excessive or disproportionate to the penalty imposed in similar cases, considering both the crime and the defendant."

Some lawyers say a death sentence for someone who killed one or two people could well be considered "disproportionate" when compared to what Gary Leon Ridgway got.

Let's hope so. Our friend Rev. Mr. George W. Brooks, J.D., Director of Advocacy of the Kolbe House, in Chicago writes:

The DP is reserved for the "worst of the worst", the most egregious killers. Obviously killing 48 is not the "worst of the worst". Maybe abolitionists can compromise and have the death penalty apply to those who kill 50 or more. It could be called the "Half-Bucking Death Penalty Reform Act"

Update: George adds the thoughts of a friend of his, "What if this was the murder of 48 police officers? What if it was 48 middle class men ( white of course) ?

The death penalty cannot be made foolproof. Mass. Governor Romney's attempts to institute the death penalty in his state are misguided and wrong. Here's the latest from the Christian Science Monitor. Go over and take the poll --vote that the death penalty must be foolproof. A civilized society cannot tolerate the execution of a single innocent person.

Massachussetts is not free of wrongful convictions. This week prosecutors asked a Judge to overturn a first degree murder conviction and a life sentence after fourteen years--citing,

...newly discovered evidence, the failure of prosecutors to disclose some exculpatory evidence, and possible official wrongdoing during the original investigation and prosecution.

Foolproof? Not possible. Human error and human misconduct are always possible. DNA may help free the innocent and convict the guilty, but there are far too many more variables at work to be able to make any death penalty system foolproof.