DEATH ROW--death penalty in America

[HairOfTheDog]

Everytime I see this kind of story, I think of Shawshank Redemption. He won't be able to survive on the outside after being locked up that long.

I predict he will either kill himself, or do something to get sent back. Hopefully, I'm wrong.

I hope he can transition back into society and live freely in peace for the rest of his days too, FAHQTOO. He has family with whom he will be staying, according to an interview with him upon his release -- I was glad to hear that.

Also, Ford will have enough wrongful conviction money to help with living expenses, without it being so excessive as to draw scammers and leaches to him as he establishes and re-establishes connections. So, I think he has a better chance of not ending up back in custody than those who complete their time and are released with no job and low prospects of getting one with a criminal record.

If Ford decides to pursue a civil suit for punitive damages associated with his wrongful conviction, I think he'd have a good chance of winning and the state would probably offer a settlement; that would be quicker and not tie him up in court. Will be interesting to learn what Ford decides to do.

The Atlantic has been covering his case for wrongful conviction for years. This is a good article about the crime, the original suspects, the trial, and the factors that kept him behind bars for three decades. CASE STORY: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/arch...ow/284179/

Justice systems are people-driven and inherently flawed; there will always be innocent people being convicted and guilty people being acquitted, even without any bias or corruption.

I'm not sure if there was any intentional wrong-doing in Ford's case, or if instead many of the system flaws converged and worked against him. In any case, I'm very glad that he's free and exonerated, about time. Thankfully, some current Louisiana prosecutors were objective enough to see the light and push the state judge to vacate the conviction altogether.

[HairOfTheDog]

MISSOURI EXECUTES THIRD INMATE THIS YEAR:
RAPIST AND MURDERER LETHALLY INJECTED


Jeffrey Ferguson,59, was executed on 26 March 2014.

He was pronounced dead at 12:11 a.m local time (0511 GMT) at a state prison in Bonne Terre, said Mike O'Connell, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Public Safety. Ferguson was given a lethal injection of 5 grams of pentobarbital, a fast-acting barbiturate at 12:01 a.m. local time, O'Connell said.


Kelli Hall, murder victim. RIP.

"She was 17 years old. She had her life in front of her," Jim Hall, victim Kelli Hall's father, told reporters after the execution as he choked back tears. "It's been a very long 25 years waiting for this execution. Hopefully we can now move forward."

According to prosecutors, Ferguson had been out drinking at a bar with a friend and then went to meet another friend at the gas station where Hall was ending her shift. Hall was checking the fuel levels in the station tanks when a witness saw her being forced into the back seat of a vehicle by a white male.

The next day a maintenance worker found Hall's coat and clothes discarded at the side of the road. A farmer later found her battered and frozen body hidden in a machinery shed.

Before being put to death, Ferguson stuck his tongue out and wiggled it toward his relatives. "At this point in my life, I believe that I am the best man that I've ever been," Ferguson said in a final statement. "I'm sorry to have to be the cause that brings you all into this dark business of execution."

Ferguson is one of a group of Missouri inmates who sued state officials in 2012 in a challenge to the constitutionality of the state's execution protocols. The case is set for trial on Sept. 15.

Story:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/26...32670.html

[Duchess]

Good riddance.

[HairOfTheDog]

Another victory for the anti death-penalty coalition

Lockett is scheduled to die April 22. Warner's execution is April 29.

A judge in Oklahoma ruled that these two lovely gentlemen's constitutional rights would be violated if they were to be executed under current state protocols.

They have not challenged their convictions or death sentences; their guilt is not in question. They instead legally challenged the method/process by which they would be executed. Lockett was found guilty in the 1999 shooting death of a 19-year-old Perry woman. Warner was found guilty of the 1997 rape and murder of his girlfriend's 11-month-old daughter.

Oklahoma last week changed its protocols to allow five distinct methods of execution which state laws prohibit from being released in full, as I understand it. The judge essentially ruled that the "veil of secrecy" is a violation of the inmates' rights.

Three procedures use a three-drug protocol that starts with either sodium thiopental, pentobarbital or midazolam and ends with vecuronium bromide, which paralyzes inmates, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

One uses a megadose of pentobarbital, and the other uses midazolam with hydromorphone. That mixtures was used in the Ohio execution of Dennis McGuire, who made gasp-like sounds for several minutes before being pronounced dead after 26 minutes.

Inmate Michael Wilson died at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in January after a three-drug injection that started with pentobarbital. His final words were "I feel my whole body burning."

Ref: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-rules-...itutional/
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I have mixed feelings about the death penalty. But, if a state has elected to have it in place and when there is no question as to the guilt of the death row inmates, I really don't give a shit if there is a possibility that some inmates might feel minutes of pain or inability to communicate before they fade away. I don't think lethal injection is in any way a cruel or unusual manner to facilitate death.

Not sure why it's so difficult for the US to produce a consistent combination of drugs that's publicly disclosed and readily available to death row prisons. The EU's ban on supplying death penalty drugs to the US has done what I suppose it was intended to do; given inmates and anti death-penalty advocates grounds to appeal/stay executions and tie up the courts.

IDK. If we're gonna use death as punishment in this country, wish we could come up with an in-house solution on how to facilitate it.

[SIXFOOTERsez]

My feelings about the death penalty are pretty clear and unambiguous, I don't give a shit if it hurts like hell for the few minutes they have to endure, especially given the contrast between their discomfort and whatever hell they put their victims through.
Bring back the gas chamber, Ol' Sparky and the noose, make them choose, sell tickets

[Cheyne]

I looked up the Charles Warner case because I thought that HotD may have made a typo in the child's age. *My apologies HotD, I should know better than to think you made a mistake*. Adriana Waller was 11 months old, and was not only anally raped, but she had suffered a 6 inch skull fracture, a broken jaw, broken ribs and lacerations in both her spleen and liver.

If Oklahoma wants a more open and humane form of death for this scumbag, I will volunteer to be a one-woman firing squad. It would do my heart good to shoot this fucker.

In all seriousness, I believe we should bring back the firing squad as a choice for executions. It's a simple procedure, doesn't cost much and I bet we'd have thousands of volunteers for the job.

[ZEROSPHERES]

Charles Warner deserves a colonoscopy with a double barrel shotgun



His sentence should be 'The procedure is to be performed weekly until polyps are found'

[SIXFOOTERsez]

Some people think that the death penalty is by definition "Cruel and Unusual" and thereby constitutionally proscribed, I get that, don't agree, but I see their point.
Some folks go to great extents to address what the founding fathers intended when they wrote the constitution, well enough.
The modern day do-gooders that use the Cruel and Unusual fail to realize is that at the time the constitution was written the punishments handed out by the overlords and masters of the known universe at the time were indeed cruel and unusual. Drawing and quartering, the rack, iron maiden, burning at the stake all come to mind. Those are the punishments that the forefathers had in mind when they specified cruel and unusual. Chemical poisoning through anesthetics had never been thought of at the time. Hanging is fast and relatively painless since mankind has had a few centuries to make it scientific. The modern electric chair is also pretty fast.
I don't see any of these as cruel and unusual. Even though there is nothing in the constitution about punishment inflicted on a criminal matching that that was perpetrated on their victims what our death penalty does still comes nowhere close.

[ZEROSPHERES]

THIS IS CRUEL AND UNUSUAL: (if it's true)

BEIJING -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's powerful uncle was stripped naked, thrown into a cage, and eaten alive by a pack of ravenous dogs, according to a newspaper with close ties to China's ruling Communist Party..........
The Hong Kong-based pro-Beijing newspaper Wen Wei Po reported that Jang and his five closest aides were set upon by 120 hunting hounds which had been starved for five days.

Kim and his brother Kim Jong Chol supervised the one-hour ordeal along with 300 other officials, according to Wen Wei Po. The newspaper added that Jang and other aides were "completely eaten up."

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2014/...eport?lite

[HairOfTheDog]

That "feed him to the dogs!" story about Kim's uncle's execution was a satire/hoax outta China. It's false.

If it were true, yeah, being fed alive to animals would be a cruel and unusual form of punishment -- I agree.

[Maggot]

Getting the entire country to wear those stupid haircuts is cruel and unusual.

[HairOfTheDog]

I looked up the Charles Warner case because I thought that HotD may have made a typo in the child's age. *My apologies HotD, I should know better than to think you made a mistake*. Adriana Waller was 11 months old, and was not only anally raped, but she had suffered a 6 inch skull fracture, a broken jaw, broken ribs and lacerations in both her spleen and liver.

Sometimes I have to re-read the details in such terrible crimes against babies/children, too -- "nobody could really be that fucked up and evil, could they?" running through my mind. Too bad the answer is so often, "yes".

Warner is the scum of the earth, no doubt about it. He deserves to die and I wouldn't care if his death involved pain.

The firing squad would certainly be a more cost-effective, quick, and (if done right) painless death that could be consistently facilitated across states without dependency on other countries for the ammunition. I wonder if victims' families, for the most part, prefer to watch the murderers eradicated without having to witness a violent death, though. I don't know the answer to that; just pondering it.

[Cheyne]

You may have that right HotD. Perhaps the system doesn't want to show the victims families the violence of death.

Many believe that hanging, shooting and electrocuting people is violent and inhumane. If one believes in the death penalty at all, one must assume that the very act of the state killing a person is going to be violent and inhumane. White washing it with a "painless" death doesn't make it any different than what they do in the middle east, we just try to be more elegant about it.

Does society have the right and responsibility to afford the families of victims of horrific crimes the satisfaction of the perpetrators death? Do we have the responsibility to show the rest of society that some things are just not acceptable and the perpetrator will pay the ultimate penalty?

[Duchess]

I don't have a problem with any manner of execution as long as there is zero chance a mistake is being made insofar as they have the right person.

I want all people who abuse animals to die too, just fuckin' die.

[BlueTiki]

Some folks go to great extents to address what the founding fathers intended when they wrote the constitution, well enough.

Then these assholes should take a moment and read: Thomas Jefferson's, A Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments.

Here's a hint . . . hanging wasn't considered "cruel".

Neither was poison.

[HairOfTheDog]

Then these assholes should take a moment and read: Thomas Jefferson's, A Bill for Proportioning Crimes and Punishments.

Here's a hint . . . hanging wasn't considered "cruel".

Neither was poison.

There's no valid argument that any doctor-overseen lethal injection could be considered a cruel unconstitutional manner to facilitate death, IMO. Some judges beg to differ.

Opponents of the death penalty are milking changes in the lethal drug combos for all they can and continue making headway in some cases.



Tommy Lynn Sells ^ -- confessed serial killer and all-around remorseless asshole -- is the latest to benefit from the controversy. He was supposed to be put to death today in Texas, but has succeeded in getting a temporary injunction.

U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmoreon Wednesday stopped the scheduled execution, saying justice department officials must disclose information to the inmate's lawyers about the supplier of a new batch of drugs that would be used to kill him.

State officials have insisted the identity of the supplier must be kept secret to protect the company from threats of violence.

Defense attorneys insist the name is needed to verify the quality of the drug and keep the inmate from unconstitutional pain.

Since obtaining a new supply of the drug pentobarbital two weeks ago, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice had cited unspecified security concerns in refusing to disclose the source and other details about the sedative it plans to use to put inmates to death.

"As a result, the state's secrecy regarding the product to be used for lethal injection has precluded (the inmates and their attorneys) from evaluating or challenging the constitutionality of the method of execution," Gilmore wrote in her a five-page opinion.

Sells, 49, was convicted of killing a 13-year-old South Texas girl asleep at her home in 1999. Kaylene Harris was stabbed nearly two dozen times and had her throat slashed. A 10-year-old friend, Krystal Surles, also was attacked but survived, and testified against Sells at trial. Sells confessed to the slaying and has been tied to more than 20 others around the nation. He has claimed responsibility for as many as 70 murders.

Ref:
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-halts-...e-secrecy/

[Cheyne]

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

I don't see anything in the 8^th amendment about "pain free" executions.

[ramseycat]

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

I don't see anything in the 8^th amendment about "pain free" executions.

I highly doubt the victims died a painless death. Why should their killer get that consideration?

[Duchess]

It probably has something to do with being civilized. Like we care about being civilized when putting vicious monsters to death. Pfft.

[HairOfTheDog]

Amendment VIII

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

I don't see anything in the 8^th amendment about "pain free" executions.

The Supreme Court refused to halt the execution. Sells' reprieve was a short one. The fucker is dead.

The family of one of his young victims echoed some of your thoughts after witnessing his execution, Cheyne.

Snip:
Tommy Lynn Sells, 49, was the first inmate to be injected with a dose of newly replenished pentobarbital that Texas prison officials obtained to replace an expired supply of the powerful sedative. When asked if he wanted to make a statement before his execution, Sells replied: "No."

As the drug began flowing into his arms inside the death chamber in Huntsville, Sells took a few breaths, his eyes closed and he began to snore. After less than a minute, he stopped moving. He was pronounced dead at 6:27 p.m. CDT - 13 minutes after being given the pentobarbital.

Terry Harris, whose 13-year-old daughter, Kaylene Harris, was fatally stabbed by Sells in 1999 in South Texas, watched as Sells was executed, saying the injection was "way more gentle than what he gave out." "Basically, the dude just took a nap," the father told reporters later outside the prison.

"My sister didn't get the constitutional pain and suffering," said Shawn Harris, the victim's brother, adding that Sells' punishment was "pretty easy" compared to what his sibling suffered: being stabbed 16 times and having her neck repeatedly slit.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-execut...al-killer/
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Sells also confessed to killing an 8 months pregnant woman, her 3-year-old, and several others. Glad he's dead.

Here's a good background on his crimes (though not updated to cover his latest legal battles and execution): http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_kille...lls/9.html