Tag: Criminal punishment

Oklahoma sues federal prisons for inmate it wants to execute

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OKLAHOMA CITY — Oklahoma is suing the Federal Bureau of Prisons for custody of a state death row inmate whom the bureau is refusing to hand over, with the state saying the man’s scheduled execution cannot be carried out in December if he’s not returned soon.

A federal lawsuit was filed Tuesday by state Attorney General John O’Connor urging that the bureau be ordered to transfer John Hanson back to Oklahoma by Nov. 9 from a federal prison in Pollock, Louisiana. That lawsuit, which also names three federal prison officials, has the support of Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler.

Hanson, 58, has a clemency hearing set for Nov. 9. Unless clemency is recommended and granted by Gov. Kevin Stitt, the inmate is scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Dec. 15 for his conviction in the 1999 killing of an elderly woman.

Mary Agnes Bowles, 77, was killed in a carjacking and kidnapping outside a Tulsa mall in 1999.

The U.S. Justice Department under Democratic President Joe Biden — who has vowed to work to end the death penalty — announced last year that it was halting federal executions. That step came after a historic use of capital punishment under Donald Trump’s presidency, with 13 executions carried out in six months. The Bureau of Prisons’ refusal to turn over Hanson raises questions about whether the agency is using its power to deliver on the president’s political pledge.

Hanson is serving a life sentence for numerous federal convictions, including being a career criminal, that predate his state death sentence.

Attorneys listed as representing Hanson did not return phone calls for comment Thursday.

Kunzweiler said he asked O’Connor’s support for the return of the inmate. The district attorney said he sought the attorney general’s help after his August letter requesting Hanson’s transfer was denied by the warden of the Louisiana facility as being “not in the public’s best interest.”

The decision was “infuriating,” Kunzweiler said.

“I’ve never in my 33 years as a prosecutor encountered this level of refusal to transfer an inmate from one jurisdiction to another,” Kunzweiler said.

After being contacted by Kunzweiler, O’Connor sent a request for Hanson’s transfer to Bureau of Prisons Regional Director Heriberto Tellez in Grand Prairie, Texas, which also was denied.

“As inmate Hanson is presently subject to a life term imposed in federal court, his transfer to state authorities for a state execution is not in the public interest,” according to the Oct. 17 letter from Tellez.

Robert Dunham, executive director of the national Death Penalty Information Center, said he is unaware of the bureau previously declining to transfer an inmate to a state for execution. But he noted that such a transfer is not required.

“The question here is, is this an abuse of discretion (by the bureau),” Dunham said. “It’s hard to make a determination about that because the letter doesn’t explain.”

Dunham said it was not clear whether the refusal to transfer Hanson is related to the federal government’s halting of executions under the Biden administration.

“Given Oklahoma’s history of botched executions, that’s an appropriate question,” Dunham said.

The prisons bureau declined comment, citing the official’s previous responses.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which represents the BOP, also declined to comment and said a response will be filed by the expedited Oct. 30 deadline set by the court.

The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of Texas because that is where Tellez is based, contends Oklahoma faces “imminent harm” if Hanson is not returned.

“Oklahoma’s execution policy begins thirty-five days prior to the execution date” of Dec. 15, according to the filing. “The Oklahoma Department of Corrections must be able to initiate the process on Nov. 10, 2022, with Hanson in custody before that date.”

The filing also argues that the federal government’s refusal to surrender Hanson usurps the state’s authority.

“Defendants have also, in essence, lawlessly threatened to commute Hanson’s sentence to life imprisonment,” from the death penalty he received.

Oklahoma has put to death six inmates since resuming executions in October 2021. The state had one of the nation’s busiest death chambers until problems in 2014 and 2015 led to a de facto moratorium. That included prison officials realizing they received the wrong lethal drug just hours away from executing Richard Glossip in September 2015. It was later learned the same wrong drug had been used to execute an inmate in January 2015.

The drug mix-ups followed a botched execution in April 2014 in which inmate Clayton Lockett struggled on a gurney before dying 43 minutes into his lethal injection — and after the state’s prisons chief ordered executioners to stop.

The state’s next scheduled execution, that of Richard Stephen Fairchild for the beating death of his girlfriend’s 3-year-old son in 1993, is set for Nov. 17.

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Read more on AP’s coverage of executions: https://apnews.com/hub/executions

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October 27, 2022
Slavery is on the ballot for voters in 5 US states

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — More than 150 years after slaves were freed in the U.S., voters in five states will soon decide whether to close loopholes that led to the proliferation of a different form of slavery — forced labor by people convicted of certain crimes.

None of the proposals would force immediate changes inside the states’ prisons, though they could lead to legal challenges related to how they use prison labor, a lasting imprint of slavery’s legacy on the entire United States.

The effort is part of a national push to amend the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that banned enslavement or involuntary servitude except as a form of criminal punishment. That exception has long permitted the exploitation of labor by convicted felons.

“The idea that you could ever finish the sentence ‘slavery’s okay when … ’ has to rip out your soul, and I think it’s what makes this a fight that ignores political lines and brings us together, because it feels so clear,” said Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises, a criminal justice advocacy group pushing to remove the amendment’s convict labor clause.

Nearly 20 states have constitutions that include language permitting slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments. In 2018, Colorado was the first to remove the language from its founding frameworks by ballot measure, followed by Nebraska and Utah two years later.

This November, versions of the question go before voters in Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Democrat from Memphis, was shocked when a fellow lawmaker told her about the slavery exception in the Tennessee Constitution and immediately began working to replace the language.

“When I found out that this exception existed, I thought, ‘We have got to fix this and we’ve got to fix this right away,’” she said. “Our constitution should reflect the values and the beliefs of our state.”

Constitutions require lengthy and technically tricky steps before they can be tweaked. Akbari first proposed changes in 2019; the GOP-dominant General Assembly then had to pass the changes by a majority vote in one two-year legislative period and then pass it again with at least two-thirds approval in the next. The amendment could then go on the ballot in the year of the next gubernatorial election.

Akbari also had to work with the state Department of Correction to ensure that inmate labor wouldn’t be prohibited under her proposal.

The proposed language going before Tennessean voters more clearly distinguishes between the two: “Slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited. Nothing in this section shall prohibit an inmate from working when the inmate has been duly convicted of a crime.”

“We understand that those who are incarcerated cannot be forced to work without pay, but we should not create a situation where they won’t be able to work at all,” Akbari said.

Similar concerns over the financial impact of prison labor led California’s Democratic-led Legislature to reject an amendment eliminating indentured servitude as a possible punishment for crime after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration predicted it could require the state to pay billions of dollars at minimum wage to prison inmates.

Scrutiny over prison labor has existed for decades, but the 13th Amendment’s loophole in particular encouraged former Confederate states after the Civil War to devise new ways to maintain the dynamics of slavery. They used restrictive measures, known as the “Black codes” because they nearly always targeted Black people, to criminalize benign interactions such as talking too loudly or not yielding on the sidewalk. Those targeted would end up in custody for minor actions, effectively enslaving them again.

Fast-forward to today: Many incarcerated workers make pennies on the dollar, which isn’t expected to change if the proposals succeed. Inmates who refuse to work may be denied phone calls or visits with family, punished with solitary confinement and even be denied parole.

Alabama is asking voters to delete all racist language from its constitution and to remove and replace a section on convict labor that’s similar to what Tennessee has had in its constitution.

Vermont often boasts of being the first state in the nation to ban slavery in 1777, but its constitution still allows involuntary servitude in a handful of circumstances. Its proposed change would replace the current exception clause with language saying ”slavery and indentured servitude in any form are prohibited.”

Oregon’s proposed change repeals its exception clause while adding language allowing a court or probation or parole agency to order alternatives to incarceration as part of sentencing.

Louisiana is the only state so far to have its proposed amendment draw organized opposition, over concerns that the replacement language may make matters worse. Even one of its original sponsors has second thoughts — Democratic Rep. Edmond Jordan told The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate last week that he’s urging voters to reject it.

The nonprofit Council for a Better Louisiana warned that the wording could technically permit slavery again, as well as continue involuntary servitude.

Louisiana’s Constitution now says: “Slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited, except in the latter case as punishment for a crime.” The amendment would change that to: “Slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited, (but this) does not apply to the otherwise lawful administration of criminal justice.”

“This amendment is an example of why it is so important to get the language right when presenting constitutional amendments to voters,” the nonprofit group said in a statement urging voters to choose “No” and lawmakers to try again, pointing to Tennessee’s ballot language as a possible template.

Supporters of the amendment say such criticisms are part of a campaign to keep exception clauses in place.

“If this doesn’t pass, it will be used as a weapon against us,” said Max Parthas, state operations director for the Abolish Slavery National Network.

The question stands as a reminder of how slavery continues to bedevil Americans, and Parthas says that’s reason enough to vote yes.

“We’ve never seen a single day in the United States where slavery was not legal,” he said. “We want to see what that looks like and I think that’s worth it.”

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This story has been updated to correct the language of Vermont’s proposal.

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October 22, 2022
Slavery is on the ballot for voters in 5 US states

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — More than 150 years after slaves were freed in the U.S., voters in five states will soon decide whether to close loopholes that led to the proliferation of a different form of slavery — forced labor by people convicted of certain crimes.

None of the proposals would force immediate changes inside the states’ prisons, though they could lead to legal challenges related to how they use prison labor, a lasting imprint of slavery’s legacy on the entire United States.

The effort is part of a national push to amend the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that banned enslavement or involuntary servitude except as a form of criminal punishment. That exception has long permitted the exploitation of labor by convicted felons.

“The idea that you could ever finish the sentence ‘slavery’s okay when … ’ has to rip out your soul, and I think it’s what makes this a fight that ignores political lines and brings us together, because it feels so clear,” said Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises, a criminal justice advocacy group pushing to remove the amendment’s convict labor clause.

Nearly 20 states have constitutions that include language permitting slavery and involuntary servitude as criminal punishments. In 2018, Colorado was the first to remove the language from its founding frameworks by ballot measure, followed by Nebraska and Utah two years later.

This November, versions of the question go before voters in Alabama, Louisiana, Oregon, Tennessee and Vermont.

Sen. Raumesh Akbari, a Democrat from Memphis, was shocked when a fellow lawmaker told her about the slavery exception in the Tennessee Constitution and immediately began working to replace the language.

“When I found out that this exception existed, I thought, ‘We have got to fix this and we’ve got to fix this right away,’” she said. “Our constitution should reflect the values and the beliefs of our state.”

Constitutions require lengthy and technically tricky steps before they can be tweaked. Akbari first proposed changes in 2019; the GOP-dominant General Assembly then had to pass the changes by a majority vote in one two-year legislative period and then pass it again with at least two-thirds approval in the next. The amendment could then go on the ballot in the year of the next gubernatorial election.

Akbari also had to work with the state Department of Correction to ensure that inmate labor wouldn’t be prohibited under her proposal.

The proposed language going before Tennessean voters more clearly distinguishes between the two: “Slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited. Nothing in this section shall prohibit an inmate from working when the inmate has been duly convicted of a crime.”

“We understand that those who are incarcerated cannot be forced to work without pay, but we should not create a situation where they won’t be able to work at all,” Akbari said.

Similar concerns over the financial impact of prison labor led California’s Democratic-led Legislature to reject an amendment eliminating indentured servitude as a possible punishment for crime after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration predicted it could require the state to pay billions of dollars at minimum wage to prison inmates.

Scrutiny over prison labor has existed for decades, but the 13th Amendment’s loophole in particular encouraged former Confederate states after the Civil War to devise new ways to maintain the dynamics of slavery. They used restrictive measures, known as the “Black codes” because they nearly always targeted Black people, to criminalize benign interactions such as talking too loudly or not yielding on the sidewalk. Those targeted would end up in custody for minor actions, effectively enslaving them again.

Fast-forward to today: Many incarcerated workers make pennies on the dollar, which isn’t expected to change if the proposals succeed. Inmates who refuse to work may be denied phone calls or visits with family, punished with solitary confinement and even be denied parole.

Alabama is asking voters to delete all racist language from its constitution and to remove and replace a section on convict labor that’s similar to what Tennessee has had in its constitution.

Vermont often boasts of being the first state in the nation to ban slavery in 1777, but its constitution still allows involuntary servitude in a handful of circumstances. Its proposed change would replace the current exception clause with language saying “slavery and involuntary servitude are forever prohibited in this State.”

Oregon’s proposed change repeals its exception clause while adding language allowing a court or probation or parole agency to order alternatives to incarceration as part of sentencing.

Louisiana is the only state so far to have its proposed amendment draw organized opposition, over concerns that the replacement language may make matters worse. Even one of its original sponsors has second thoughts — Democratic Rep. Edmond Jordan told The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate last week that he’s urging voters to reject it.

The nonprofit Council for a Better Louisiana warned that the wording could technically permit slavery again, as well as continue involuntary servitude.

Louisiana’s Constitution now says: “Slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited, except in the latter case as punishment for a crime.” The amendment would change that to: “Slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited, (but this) does not apply to the otherwise lawful administration of criminal justice.”

“This amendment is an example of why it is so important to get the language right when presenting constitutional amendments to voters,” the nonprofit group said in a statement urging voters to choose “No” and lawmakers to try again, pointing to Tennessee’s ballot language as a possible template.

Supporters of the amendment say such criticisms are part of a campaign to keep exception clauses in place.

“If this doesn’t pass, it will be used as a weapon against us,” said Max Parthas, state operations director for the Abolish Slavery National Network.

The question stands as a reminder of how slavery continues to bedevil Americans, and Parthas says that’s reason enough to vote yes.

“We’ve never seen a single day in the United States where slavery was not legal,” he said. “We want to see what that looks like and I think that’s worth it.”

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October 20, 2022
Oklahoma to execute man for 2002 killing of infant daughter

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McALESTER, Okla. — A 57-year-old Oklahoma man is scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Thursday for killing his 9-month-old daughter in 2002, despite claims by his attorneys that he is mentally ill and not competent to be executed.

Attorneys for Benjamin Cole do not dispute that he killed Brianna Cole by forcibly bending the infant backward, breaking her spine and tearing her aorta, but argue that he is both severely mentally ill and that he has a growing lesion on his brain that has continued to worsen while he has been in prison.

Cole has refused medical attention and ignored his personal hygiene, hoarding food and living in a darkened cell with little to no communication with staff or fellow prisoners, his attorneys told the state’s Pardon and Parole Board last month during a clemency hearing.

“His condition has continued to decline over the course of this year,” Cole’s attorney Katrina Conrad-Legler said.

The panel voted 4-1 to deny clemency, and a district judge earlier this month determined Cole was competent to be executed. A last-minute appeal filed with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to halt his execution was denied on Wednesday.

Cole has a lesion on his brain, which is separate from his diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, that has grown in size in recent years and affects the part of his brain that deals with problem solving, movement and social interaction, Conrad-Legler has said.

Attorneys for the state and members of the victim’s family told the board that Cole’s symptoms of mental illness are exaggerated and that the brutal nature of his daughter’s killing merit his execution.

Assistant Attorney General Tessa Henry said Cole killed his daughter because he was infuriated that her crying from her crib interrupted his playing of a video game.

“He is not severely mentally ill,” said another prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Ashley Willis. “There is nothing in the constitution or jurisprudence that prevents his execution.”

Prosecutors noted that the infant had numerous injuries consistent with a history of abuse and that Cole had previously served time in prison in California for abusing another child.

Board members also heard emotional testimony from family members of the slain child’s mother, who urged the board to reject clemency.

“The first time I got to see Brianna in person was lying in a casket,” said Donna Daniel, the victim’s aunt. “Do you know how horrible it is to see a 9-month-old baby in a casket?

“This baby deserves justice. Our family deserves justice.”

Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor said in a statement that he is confident Cole is sufficiently competent to be executed.

“Although his attorneys claim Cole is mentally ill to the point of catatonia, the fact is that Cole fully cooperated with a mental evaluation in July of this year,” O’Connor said. “The evaluator, who was not hired by Cole or the State, found Cole to be competent to be executed and that ‘Mr. Cole does not currently evidence any substantial, overt signs of mental illness, intellectual impairment, and/or neurocognitive impairment.’”

Cole’s execution would be the sixth since Oklahoma resumed carrying out the death penalty in October 2021.

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October 19, 2022
Arizona death row inmate seeks forensic tests in 1980 deaths

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PHOENIX — A judge is mulling an Arizona death row prisoner’s request to have fingerprint and DNA tests conducted on evidence from the two 1980 killings for which he is scheduled to be executed next month.

A lawyer for Murray Hooper said at a hearing Wednesday that her client is innocent, that no physical evidence ties him to the killings and that forensic testing could lead to the identification of those responsible. Kelly Culshaw, Hooper’s attorney, also raised questions about the benefits received by witnesses who testified against her client, including favorable treatment in other criminal cases.

“Forensic evidence would have made a difference in this case,” Culshaw said.

Hooper was convicted before computerized fingerprint systems and DNA testing were available in criminal cases, according to his legal team.

Prosecutors say that even if someone else’s prints or DNA were found, that wouldn’t overcome the overwhelming evidence against Hooper.

Hooper is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection or lethal gas at a prison in Florence, Arizona, on Nov. 16 for the killings of William “Pat” Redmond and his mother-in-law, Helen Phelps, at Redmond’s home in Phoenix on Dec. 31, 1980. Redmond’s wife, Marilyn, was shot in the head but recovered.

Lawyers for Hooper say Marilyn Redmond’s description of the assailants changed several times before she identified their client, who claimed not to be in Arizona at the time.

Superior Court Judge Jennifer Green, who hasn’t yet issued a ruling on the forensic testing request, pointed out that a federal appeals court characterized the evidence implicating Hooper as overwhelming.

Asked about the criticism that some witnesses had an incentive to lie, prosecutor Jeffrey Sparks said jurors at Hooper’s trial and appeals courts considered those claims and concluded there was no chance that would have changed the verdict.

Two other men, William Bracy and Edward McCall, were convicted in the killings but died before their death sentences could be carried out.

Authorities say Robert Cruz, who was alleged to have had ties to organized crime, hired Hooper, Bracy and McCall to kill Pat Redmond, who co-owned a printing business. They said Cruz wanted to take over the business and was unhappy that Redmond had rejected his offers to enter several printing contracts with Las Vegas hotels, according to court records. In 1995, Cruz was acquitted of murder charges in both deaths.

Hooper would be the third prisoner put to death this year after Arizona resumed carrying out executions in May, following a nearly eight-year hiatus attributed to both the difficulty of obtaining lethal injection drugs and criticism that a 2014 execution was botched.

There are 111 prisoners on Arizona’s death row, and 22 have exhausted their appeals, according to the Arizona Attorney General’s Office.

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October 19, 2022
US Supreme Court denies Oklahoma death row inmate’s appeal

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FILE – This undated photo provided by the Oklahoma State Department of Corrections shows Benjamin Robert Cole Sr. The U.S. Supreme Court has denied a last-minute appeal filed by Oklahoma death row inmate Benjamin Cole. The high court’s decision on Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2022 paves the way for the 57-year-old to be executed Thursday at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester. (Oklahoma State Department of Corrections via AP, File)

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October 19, 2022
February execution date set for Missouri man who killed four

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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday set a February execution date for a suburban St. Louis man who was convicted of killing his girlfriend and her three young children nearly 18 years ago.

Leonard Taylor is scheduled to be executed on Feb. 7 at the state prison in Bonne Terre. He was convicted in 2008 in the shooting deaths of Angela Rowe, 28, and her three children, Alexis, 10; AcQreya, 6; and Tyrese Conley, 5. Their bodies were found in their home in Jennings on Dec. 3, 2004.

In May 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Jennings’ case, leading to the setting of an execution date.

Taylor’s execution would come about a month after another convicted killer is scheduled to die. Scott McLaughlin, who was convicted of raping and killing an ex-girlfriend 19 years ago, is scheduled for execution on Jan. 3.

Another convicted killer, Kevin Johnson, faces the death penalty on Nov. 29 for killing Kirkwood Police Sgt. Bill McEntee in suburban St. Louis in 2005.

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October 18, 2022
Judge dismisses lawsuit over upcoming lethal injection

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MONTGOMERY, Ala — A federal judge dismissed an inmate’s claim seeking to block his upcoming execution in Alabama because of reported problems at a recent lethal injection.

The judge on Sunday granted Alabama’s request to dismiss the lawsuit brought by Kenneth Eugene Smith, agreeing that Smith waited too long to file the challenge. But U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker Jr. also warned Alabama’s prison commissioner to strictly follow established protocol when officials attempt to put Smith to death next month.

“Sanctions will be swift and serious if counsel and the Commissioner do not honor or abide by their representations and stipulations,” Huffaker wrote.

Smith is set to be executed by lethal injection Nov. 17 after being convicted in the murder-for-hire killing of Elizabeth Dorlene Sennett, 45.

Smith’s attorneys pointed to a July execution, which an anti-death penalty group claims was botched, to argue that Alabama’s lethal injection process creates a risk of cruel and unusual punishment.

The July 28 execution of Joe Nathan James Jr. was carried out more than three hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied a request for a stay. State officials later acknowledged the execution was delayed because of difficulties in establishing an intravenous line, but did not specify how long it took.

A doctor who witnessed a private autopsy paid for by an anti-death penalty group said it appeared officials might have attempted to perform a “cutdown,” a procedure in which the skin is opened to allow a visual search for a vein.

Huffaker noted that Corrections Commissioner John Hamm “represents in his brief and during oral argument that the ADOC did not employ a cutdown procedure or intramuscular sedation during the James execution and denies any present intent to employ any such procedure in the future.”

Huffaker ruled that Smith missed the time frame to challenge Alabama’s lethal injection process.

Smith missed the 2018 deadline to request execution by nitrogen hypoxia, an execution method that Alabama has authorized but not developed a process to use. Smith’s attorneys argued that the state violated his due process rights by not providing him information necessary to make a knowing and voluntary waiver of his nitrogen hypoxia election right in 2018.

His attorneys argue that Smith did not know nitrogen hypoxia “would not be implemented for years, if ever.” Huffaker said that complaint also could not overcome a “clear statute-of-limitations hurdle.”

Prosecutors said Smith was one of two men paid $1,000 to kill Sennett on behalf of her husband, the Rev. Charles Sennett, who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect on insurance. Smith maintained it was the other man who killed Sennett, according to court documents.

Smith was initially convicted in 1989, and a jury voted 10-2 to recommend a death sentence, which a judge imposed. His conviction was overturned on appeal in 1992.

He was retried and convicted again in 1996. This time, the jury recommended a life sentence by a vote of 11-1, but a judge overrode the jury’s recommendation and sentenced Smith to death. Alabama no longer allows a judge to override a jury’s recommendation.

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October 17, 2022
EXPLAINER: What next in the Florida school shooter trial?

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The jurors who will decide whether Florida school shooter Nikolas Cruz is sentenced to death or life without parole are expected to begin their deliberations Wednesday, concluding a three-month trial.

Cruz, 24, pleaded guilty last year to the murders of 14 students and three staff members at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14, 2018. The trial has only been to determine his sentence.

Cruz’s massacre is the deadliest mass shooting that has ever gone to trial in the U.S. Nine other people in the U.S. who fatally shot at least 17 people died during or immediately after their attacks by suicide or police gunfire. The suspect in the 2019 massacre of 23 at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart is awaiting trial.

The jurors will be sequestered during their deliberations, which could take hours or days — no one knows. They have been told to pack for at least two nights.

Here is a look at the case, how the seven-man, five-woman jury will come to their decision and what will happen after that.

WHAT DID CRUZ DO?

Cruz, by his own admission, began thinking about committing a school shooting while in middle school, about five years before he carried it out. He purchased his AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle almost exactly a year before the shooting and his planning became serious about seven months in advance. He researched previous mass shooters, saying he tried to learn from their experience. He bought ammunition, a vest to carry it and a bag to hide it. He picked Valentine’s Day to make sure it would never be celebrated at the school again.

He took an Uber to the school, arriving about 20 minutes before dismissal. He went inside a three-story classroom building, shooting down the halls and into classrooms for about seven minutes. He returned to some wounded to kill them with a second volley. He then tried to shoot at fleeing students from a third-floor window, but the thick hurricane glass thwarted him. He put down his gun and fled, but was captured about an hour later.

WHAT HAPPENED AT THE TRIAL?

Lead prosecutor Mike Satz kept his case simple. He played security videos of the shooting and showed gruesome crime scene and autopsy photos. Teachers and students testified about watching others die. He took the jury to the fenced-off building, which remains blood-stained and bullet-pocked. Parents and spouses gave tearful and angry statements.

Cruz’s lead attorney Melisa McNeill and her team never questioned the horror he inflicted, but focused on their belief that his birth mother’s heavy drinking during pregnancy left him with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Their experts said his bizarre, troubling and sometimes violent behavior starting at age 2 was misdiagnosed as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, meaning he never got the proper treatment. That left his widowed adoptive mother overwhelmed, they said.

WHAT’S REQUIRED FOR CRUZ TO GET A DEATH SENTENCE?

The jurors will be voting 17 times — once for each victim. For the jurors to recommend a death sentence for a specific victim, they first must unanimously agree that the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the killing involved at least one aggravating circumstance as proscribed under Florida law.

This part should not be difficult — the listed aggravating circumstances include knowingly creating a great risk of death to numerous people, committing murders that were “especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel” or committed in a “cold, calculated, and premeditated manner.” They then must unanimously agree that the aggravating factors warrant consideration of the death penalty.

They then must determine whether the aggravating circumstances “outweigh” the mitigating factors that the defense argued such as his birth mother’s drinking, his adoptive mother’s alleged failure to get him proper psychiatric care and his admission of guilt.

If they do, the jurors can then recommend a death sentence — but that’s not required. A juror can ignore the weighing exercise and vote for life out of mercy for Cruz.

A death sentence recommendation requires a unanimous vote on at least one victim. If one or more jurors vote for life on all victims, that will be his sentence.

WHAT HAPPENS IF THE JURY RECOMMENDS A DEATH SENTENCE?

Circuit Judge Elizabeth Scherer will schedule a sentencing hearing, likely months from now. Cruz’s attorneys will have an opportunity to persuade her to override the jury and impose a life sentence, but that rarely succeeds. If sentenced to death, he will be sent to Florida’s Death Row while his case goes through appeals. It will be years before he is executed, assuming the death sentence isn’t overturned and a retrial required.

WHAT HAPPENS IF THE JURY IMPOSES A LIFE SENTENCE?

If the jury cannot unanimously agree that Cruz should be executed for at least one victim, he will be sentenced to life without parole — Scherer cannot overrule the jury. She could sentence him immediately or schedule a future hearing.

After he is sentenced, the Florida Department of Corrections would assign him to a maximum security prison where he would be part of the general population. McNeill, in her closing argument, alluded that could be an exceedingly dangerous place for someone like Cruz.

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October 11, 2022
Attorneys: Inmate endured ‘torture’ during execution attempt

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MONTGOMERY, Ala — An Alabama inmate said prison staff poked him with needles for over an hour as they tried to find a vein during an aborted lethal injection last month. At one point, they left him hanging vertically on a gurney before state officials made the decision to call off the execution.

Attorneys for 57-year-old Alan Eugene Miller wrote about his experience during Alabama’s Sept. 22 execution attempt in a court filing made last week. Miller’s attorneys are trying to block the state from attempting a second lethal injection.

Two men in scrubs used needles to repeatedly probe Miller’s arms, legs, feet and hands, at one point using a cell phone flashlight to help their search for a vein, according to the Oct. 6 court filing. The attorneys called Miller the “only living execution survivor in the United States” and said Alabama subjected Miller “to precisely the unnecessary and wanton infliction of pain that the Eighth Amendment was intended to prohibit.”

Alabama has asked the state Supreme Court to set a new execution date for Miller, saying the execution was canceled only because of a time issue as the state faced a midnight deadline to get the lethal injection underway.

“Despite this failed execution, the physical and mental torture it inflicted upon Mr. Miller, and the fact that Defendants have now botched three lethal injection executions in just four years, Defendants relentlessly seek to execute Mr. Miller again—presumably by lethal injection,” attorneys for Miller wrote, referencing an execution that was canceled and another that took three hours to get underway.

“What then, in Defendants’ view, is a constitutional amount of time to spend stabbing someone with needles in an attempt to kill them?” his attorneys wrote.

The 351-pound (159-kilogram) inmate testified in an earlier court hearing that medical workers always have difficulty accessing his veins, and that is why he wanted to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia, a newly approved execution method that the state has yet to try.

Miller said he was led into the execution chamber at 10 p.m., about an hour after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted an injunction that had been blocking the lethal injunction, and was strapped to the gurney at about 10:15 p.m.

After the two men used needles to probe various parts of his body for a vein, also using a phone flashlight to help, Miller told the men, “he could feel that they were not accessing his veins, but rather stabbing around his veins.” Later, a third man then began slapping his neck in an apparent attempt to look for a vein.

The three men in scrubs stopped their probing and left the chamber after there was a loud knock on a death chamber window from the state’s observation room, according to the court filing. A prison officer then raised the gurney to a vertical position. Miller said the wall clock read 11:40 p.m. and he estimated that he hung there for about 20 minutes before he was let down and told that his execution was cancelled for the evening.

“Mr. Miller felt nauseous, disoriented, confused, and fearful about whether he was about to be killed, and was deeply disturbed by his view of state employees silently staring at him from the observation room while he was hanging vertically from the gurney. Blood was leaking from some of Mr. Miller’s wounds,” the motion stated.

Miller was sentenced to death after being convicted of a 1999 workplace rampage in which he killed Terry Jarvis, Lee Holdbrooks and Scott Yancy.

“Due to the lateness of the hour, the Alabama Department of Corrections was limited in the number of attempts to gain intravenous access it could make. ADOC made the decision to halt its efforts to obtain IV access at approximately 11:30 p.m., resulting in the expiration of the court’s execution warrant,” the state attorney general’s office wrote in the request for a new date.

This is at least the third time Alabama has acknowledged problems with vein access during a lethal injection. The state’s July execution of Joe Nathan James took more than three hours to get underway. Alabama called off the 2018 execution of Doyle Hamm after being unable to establish an intravenous line.

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October 11, 2022
Mississippi seeks execution date in 2000 killing of teenager

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JACKSON, Miss. — The Mississippi attorney general’s office is asking the state to set an execution date for a former U.S. Marine Corps recruiter who was convicted in the 2000 rape and killing of a 16-year-old waitress.

Thomas Edwin Loden Jr., now 58, has been on death row since 2001, when he pleaded guilty to capital murder, rape and four counts of sexual battery.

Mississippi’s most recent execution was in November.

According to documents the attorney general filed Tuesday with the state Supreme Court, Loden kidnapped Leesa Marie Gray, who was stranded on the side of a road in northern Mississippi’s Itawamba County. Court records said Loden spent four hours repeatedly raping and sexually battering Gray before suffocating and strangling her to death.

Gray disappeared June 22, 2000, on her way home from working as a waitress at her family’s restaurant in the Dorsey community. Prosecutors said she was last seen driving out of the restaurant parking lot. Relatives found her car hours later with her purse still inside and the hazard lights flashing.

According to court documents, her body was found the next day in Loden’s van.

Loden had joined the Marine Corps immediately after he graduated from high school in Itawamba County in 1982. He served in Operation Desert Storm and went to recruiter school in 1998. Loden started operating the Marines’ recruiting office later that year in Vicksburg, Mississippi.

During Loden’s sentencing hearing after he pleaded guilty, he did not cross examine state witnesses, did not object to exhibits that prosecutors showed and did not offer any evidence to help his own case, the attorney general’s office wrote.

Loden filed several appeals of his conviction, and those were unsuccessful.

In 2015, he joined other four other Mississippi death row inmates in a federal lawsuit challenging the state’s lethal injection protocol. The state revised the protocol to allow the use of midazolam if thiopental or pentobarbital cannot be obtained.

A federal district judge granted an injunction to prevent the state from using compounded pentobarbital or midazolam, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that ruling. The case is back at the district court and is unresolved.

The state attorney general’s office wrote Tuesday that the ongoing challenge to the lethal injection protocol “is not an impediment to setting Loden’s execution.”

Merrida Coxwell, one of the attorneys representing Loden in the federal lawsuit, declined to comment Tuesday on the attorney general’s request for an execution date because he had not yet read the filing. Another attorney in the federal lawsuit, Stacy Ferraro, did not immediately respond to a phone message from The Associated Press.

The execution last November was Mississippi’s first in nine years. A lethal injection was given to a David Neal Cox, who had pleaded guilty to killing his estranged wife and sexually assaulting her young daughter as her mother lay dying in 2012.

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October 4, 2022