Anglonautes > English words - vocabulary - dictionary - encyclopedia > Justice > USA > Death penalty > Appeal, Reprieve, Stay, Commutation, Pardon, Clemency

SAN FRANCISCO — With the clock ticking and uncertainties — both legal and pharmaceutical — hovering, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered a temporary last-minute reprieve on Monday in what would be California’s first execution in more than four years.

Mr. Schwarzenegger, a Republican in the final weeks of his administration, announced late Monday that he would postpone the execution of Albert G. Brown Jr. — who had been scheduled to die by lethal injection at 12:01 a.m. on Wednesday — until Thursday to allow time for legal appeals to be exhausted. The state Department of Corrections has rescheduled the execution for Thursday evening, the governor’s office said.

Mr. Brown, 56, was convicted in 1982 of raping and strangling a 15-year-old girl in Riverside, Calif.

The postponement came after a whirlwind day in which Mr. Brown’s fortunes seemed to rise and fall with each passing hour. Earlier Monday, Mr. Brown had been denied a stay from a state judge, Verna A. Adams, in Marin County, where San Quentin State Prison is located.

Shortly after that denial state officials also made a surprise announcement that the execution would be the last in the state until the one of the drugs proposed for his execution — sodium thiopental, a barbiturate — could be restocked by the state’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

Moreover, Terry Thornton, a spokeswoman for the department, said its supply of sodium thiopental was good only until Friday. That expiration date is now just hours after Mr. Brown’s planned execution on Thursday.

Ms. Thornton said her department was continuing with preparations for Mr. Brown’s execution and had enough sodium thiopental to stop Mr. Brown’s heart. She added that the state was “actively seeking supplies of the drug for future executions.”

How exactly sodium thiopental became scarce is unclear. The Food and Drug Administration reported shortages in March, citing production issues with Hospira, an Illinois-based company that is the sole American manufacturer.

A company spokesman, Dan Rosenberg, said that the drug was unavailable because of a lack of supply of an active pharmaceutical ingredient and that Hospira was working to get the drug back on the market by early next year. But Mr. Rosenberg also expressed displeasure that the drug — meant to be used as an anesthetic — had found its way into death chambers.

“Hospira manufactures this product because it improves or saves lives, and the company markets it solely for use as indicated on the product labeling,” Mr. Rosenberg said in a statement. “The drug is not indicated for capital punishment, and Hospira does not support its use in this procedure.”

He added that the company had made that opinion clear to corrections departments nationwide.

Mr. Brown’s execution was cleared on Friday by a federal district judge, Jeremy D. Fogel, who had effectively halted executions in the state in 2006 after expressing concern about a three-drug cocktail commonly used in lethal injection procedures and various deficiencies in the state’s methods, including the training of execution teams, antiquated facilities and the preparation of execution drugs.

Since then, however, California has drafted detailed new regulations — approved earlier this year — to guide executions and built a new death chamber at San Quentin, north of San Francisco.

Those developments had apparently quelled Judge Fogel’s worries enough to allow Mr. Brown’s execution to proceed.

Mr. Brown is still seeking a stay from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. His lawyer, John R. Grele, said Judge Fogel’s decision was “neither a legal nor rational response” to his client’s efforts to avoid execution or undue pain.

Calif. Governor Postpones Execution, NYT, 27.9.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/us/28execute.html

Inmate Asks Court to Halt His Execution

September 26, 2010
The New York Times
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A death row inmate asked a federal appeals court on Sunday to halt his execution as he declined to choose a method for the lethal injection.

Lawyers for the inmate, Albert G. Brown, filed court papers to appeal a federal judge’s refusal to block the execution, which is set for Wednesday. Mr. Brown also let pass a noon deadline set by the judge to choose between a one-drug lethal injection or execution by a three-drug cocktail.

Mr. Brown’s refusal to choose means a three-drug cocktail will be used if the appeals court does not block his execution, which would be California’s first in nearly five years. He was sentenced to die for abducting, raping and killing a 15-year-old, Susan Jordan of Riverside County, in 1980.

Judge Jeremy Fogel of United States District Court in San Jose denied Mr. Brown’s two requests on Saturday to change his mind about going forward with the execution.

The judge initially delayed the execution in 2006 after finding that poorly trained officials carried out executions in a death chamber too cramped and dingy to protect the inmate from suffering “cruel and unusual” punishment while receiving a lethal injection. The state has since constructed a new death chamber and overhauled the selection and training of its execution team.

Mr. Brown’s latest appeal will be heard by a panel of three judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Inmate Asks Court to Halt His Execution,
NYT,
26.9.2010,
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/us/27execute.html

Execution of Georgia Man

in Killing of Officer

Is Stayed a Third Time

October 25, 2008
The New York Times
By ROBBIE BROWN

ATLANTA — A federal appeals court on Friday halted the execution of a Georgia inmate convicted in the 1989 killing of a police officer, the third time in 16 months that a stay of execution has been ordered in the case.

The inmate, Troy A. Davis, 40, was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Monday for the murder of Mark A. MacPhail, a Savannah police officer.

In deciding to consider a new hearing for Mr. Davis, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, asked his lawyers to prove that no reasonable person today would find him guilty.

Since Mr. Davis’s conviction in 1991, seven witnesses have recanted their testimony, including two who said they had felt pressure by the police to testify against Mr. Davis and three who said a different man had admitted to the killing. Prosecutors presented no DNA evidence or murder weapon, although they linked bullet casings found at the scene to a gun they said Mr. Davis had used in an earlier shooting.

The case has bounced around the judicial system, appearing before at least 29 judges in seven types of reviews. The Georgia Supreme Court twice denied Mr. Davis a new hearing, and the United States Supreme Court and the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles have issued stays of execution before rejecting his appeal.

“It’s extraordinary for three stays to be issued in one case,” said Stephen B. Bright, a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School and president of the Southern Center for Human Rights. “Clearly, the case has been very troubling to each of the courts that examined it.”

Mr. Davis’s lawyers have asked the appeals court to decide whether the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment prohibits the execution of the innocent, the same question that the Supreme Court declined to consider.

If the appeals court agrees to hear the case, the stay of execution will continue until a decision is reached. If not, Georgia may proceed with the execution.

The outcome is difficult to predict, Mr. Bright said, because previous decisions in the case have been so close.

The Georgia Supreme Court voted 4 to 3 in March against a new trial, and the United States Supreme Court made the unusual decision to meet in conference twice before declining the case.

Officer MacPhail was shot to death early on Aug. 19, 1989, while moonlighting as a security guard. He was breaking up a fight between two men over a beer in a Burger King parking lot when, prosecutors say, Mr. Davis fired three shots from a pistol into his leg, chest and face. Mr. Davis says he left the scene before the shooting.

Mr. Davis has received an outpouring of publicity and support, including demonstrations against his execution on Thursday in 35 cities around the world.

“It’s another small victory in a big war,” said Mr. Davis’s sister, Martina Correia. But the officer’s mother, Anneliese MacPhail, called the ruling the latest episode in a recurring nightmare. “Why in the world do we have to go through this again?” she asked. “I thought when the Supreme Court in Washington ruled, it would be over.”

Execution of Georgia Man in Killing of Officer Is Stayed a Third Time,
NYT,
25.10.2008,
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/25/us/25execute.html

Texas Ruling Signals

Halt to Executions Indefinitely

October 3, 2007
The New York Times
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, Oct. 2 — Signaling an indefinite halt to executions in Texas, the state’s highest criminal appeals court late Tuesday stayed the lethal injection of a 28-year-old Honduran man who was scheduled to be put to death Wednesday.

The reprieve by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals was granted a week after the United States Supreme Court agreed to consider whether a form of lethal injection constituted cruel and unusual punishment barred under the Eighth Amendment. On Thursday, the Supreme Court stepped in to halt a planned execution in Texas at the last minute, and though many legal experts interpreted that as a signal for all states to wait for a final ruling on lethal injection before any further executions, Texas officials said they planned to move ahead with more.

As a result, Tuesday’s ruling by the Texas court was seen as a sign that judges in the nation’s leading death penalty state were taking guidance from the Supreme Court and putting off imminent executions.

The Texas court order gave state authorities up to 30 days to explain in legal papers why the execution of the inmate, Heliberto Chi, should proceed. With responses then certain from defense lawyers, the effect of the order was to put off the execution for months, lawyers said.

Mr. Chi was convicted of killing the manager of a men’s store in Arlington in 2001.

Other executions, including four more scheduled in the next five months, were also likely to be stayed, said David R. Dow of the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit law clinic that worked on Mr. Chi’s appeal.

“Until the Court of Criminal Appeals addresses the questions raised in this case there will be no more executions in Texas,” predicted Mr. Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston.

Acting less than a week after it rejected another inmate’s appeal 5 to 4, the appeals court justices provided no breakdown of the vote and did not give any reasoning for their decision. But they directed the state’s director of criminal justice, Nathaniel Quarterman, not to execute Mr. Chi and gave Mr. Quarterman and Tim Curry, the district attorney of Tarrant County, where the crime had been committed, up to 30 days to respond to claims by Mr. Chi’s lawyers that the formulation and administration of chemicals used for lethal injections did not quickly and painlessly kill but paralyzed the condemned inmates while they painfully suffocated.

Earlier Tuesday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted 4 to 3 against recommending a stay for Mr. Chi. A request for a 30-day reprieve was also pending with Gov. Rick Perry.

Had the appeals court not halted the execution, Mr. Chi’s lawyers would have taken the case to the United States Supreme Court, which last Thursday stayed the execution for another Texas inmate, Carlton Turner Jr.

Bryan Stevenson, director of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., and a law professor at New York University, said the Supreme Court’s ruling was a sign that while it was reviewing the legality of lethal injection in a Kentucky case, “it was at least unseemly for states to be carrying out executions.”

Deborah Denno, a professor at Fordham Law School, called the latest stay in Texas significant. “I do think Texas is reaching a turning point,” Ms. Denno said. “It’s not unusual throughout the country, but it is unusual in Texas. And not uncommonly when people are talking about the death penalty, there’s Texas and everywhere else, because Texas seems to be in its own death penalty world.”

But Diane Clements, president of Justice For All, a victims’ advocacy group in Texas, said the Supreme Court and the Texas appeals court gave no reasons for their rulings, “so we’re left here with no direction.”

The delays spelled more suffering for victims’ families, Ms. Clements said. “I’m sure family of that stayed-execution victim is on a roller coaster ride,” she said. “If there’s anything certain about the death penalty for families, it’s that it is very uncertain.”

    Texas Ruling Signals Halt to Executions Indefinitely,
    NYT, 3.10.2007,
    http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/03/us/03texas.html

Governor Commutes Sentence

in Texas

August 31, 2007
The New York Times
By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

HOUSTON, Aug. 30 — Hours before his scheduled execution as a disputed accomplice in a 1996 murder, Kenneth Foster won a rare commutation to life in prison on Thursday after Gov. Rick Perry followed the recommendation of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and granted a death row reprieve.

The case had raised international protests because Mr. Foster, 30, was not the gunman but the driver of a getaway car in a San Antonio robbery spree that ended in murder. He was convicted under a Texas law that makes co-conspirators liable in certain cases of homicide.

“It makes me feel wonderful,” said Mr. Foster’s father, Kenneth Foster Sr., who had been visiting his son at the death house in Huntsville with other family members when word of the board’s clemency recommendation came.

“He was very excited; he jumped for joy,” the elder Mr. Foster said.

Since taking office in 2000, Mr. Perry has granted death row commutations recommended by the pardons board only twice before, and has once overruled the panel’s recommendation, the governor’s office said.

Mr. Foster’s lawyer, Keith S. Hampton, who had run out of options except for a final — and sixth — appeal to the United States Supreme Court, said, “I’m very relieved, for Kenneth and all his supporters.” Mr. Hampton said Mr. Foster could conceivably be released from prison some day, perhaps after serving 30 more years. He has served 10.

The pardons board, appointed by the governor, met Wednesday and announced Thursday morning that it had voted 6 to 1 to recommend commutation. Shortly afterward, Mr. Perry, a Republican, accepted the recommendation.

“I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster’s sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment,” the governor said in a statement.

Mr. Perry raised doubts about the law that allowed Mr. Foster and the triggerman to be tried together and urged the Legislature to re-examine the issue.

Three years ago the pardons board, with one vacancy, voted 5 to 1 to recommend commuting the death sentence of another convicted murderer, Kelsey Patterson, who had been given a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Mr. Perry turned down the recommendation, and Mr. Patterson was executed by lethal injection in May 2004.

The two earlier death row commutations by Mr. Perry at the pardons board’s request came this year and in 2004. In 2005, after the United States Supreme Court halted the execution of juveniles, he commuted the death sentences of 28 17-year-olds. But 163 other executions have gone forward under Mr. Perry.

Mr. Foster was arrested with three accomplices after a night’s armed robbery spree through San Antonio that ended with one of his companions gunning down a 25-year-old law student, Michael LaHood Jr. The jury convicted Mr. Foster and sentenced him to die, along with the gunman, Mauriceo Brown, finding that he should have anticipated that the group’s crimes could lead to murder.

Mr. Brown was executed last year. The two other accomplices are serving life terms.

Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn, director of the Program to Abolish the Death Penalty of Amnesty International USA, hailed the reprieve.

“Given the obvious — that it would have been virtually impossible to predict the murder of Michael LaHood — Foster was sentenced to death under the broadest and most appalling interpretation of the law of parties,” Ms. Gunawardena-Vaughn said.

Norma LaHood, the murder victim’s mother, said she took the commutation as divine will.

“I’m filled with peace,” Mrs. LaHood said by telephone from San Antonio. “I will mourn my son till I die, but I’m not forced anymore to relive his death.”

Governor Commutes Sentence in Texas,
NYT, 31.8.2007,
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/us/31execute.html

7.15pm

Texas governor

spares man from execution

Thursday August 30, 2007

Guardian Unlimited

Haroon Siddique and agencies

A man in the US was today saved from the death penalty just hours before his scheduled execution.

The Texas governor, Rick Perry, accepted a parole board recommendation and commuted the sentence of Kenneth Foster, who had been due to die via lethal injection this evening.

Foster, 30, was the getaway driver in a 1996 murder but his sentence had been criticised as he had nothing to do with the shots being fired.

He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death under the Texas law of parties, which makes non-shooters equally accountable for a crime.

Another condemned man was executed under the same statute earlier this year.

"I believe the right and just decision is to commute Foster's sentence from the death penalty to life imprisonment," Mr Perry said in a statement.

In a highly unusual move, the Texas parole board had voted six to one, earlier today, to recommend that Mr Perry commuted the sentence, although the governor was under no obligation to take their advice.

Foster said he was aware his friends were committing crimes, as he drove them around in a rental car while they robbed at least four people.

"It was wrong," he said. "I don't want to downplay that. I was wrong for that. I was too much of a follower. I'm straight up about that."

Their robbery spree, while they were all high on alcohol and marijuana, turned deadly when one of Foster's passengers, Mauriceo Brown, shot and killed a victim.

Brown and Foster were tried together and convicted of capital murder. Foster was set to be executed tonight, 13 months after 31-year-old Brown.

Mr Perry said: "I am concerned about Texas law that allowed capital murder defendants to be tried simultaneously and it is an issue I think the legislature should examine."

Foster's lawyers argued that statements from the other two friends, both now serving life sentences, provided new evidence that supported his claim that he did not know Brown was going to shoot.

Last week, Texas reached a milestone when a man who murdered a convenience store worker became the 400th person executed by the state since it resumed capital punishment in 1982.

Foster would have been the 24th prisoner put to death in Texas this year had he been executed.

Texas governor spares man from execution,
G, 30.8.2007,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2159468,00.html

June 20 1953

Rosenbergs executed

despite pleas

From The Guardian archive

June 20 1953

The Guardian

Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed early this morning at Sing Sing Prison for conspiring to pass atomic secrets to Russia in World War II.

Only a few minutes before, President Eisenhower had rejected a last plea written in her cell by Ethel Rosenberg. Mr Emanuel Bloch, the couple's lawyer, took the note to the White House where guards turned him away.

Neither of the two said anything before they died. The news of their execution was announced at 1.43 a.m.

Julius Rosenberg, aged 35, was the first to die. They were executed just before the setting sun heralded the Jewish Sabbath. Prison officials had advanced the execution time to spare religious feelings.

Mrs Rosenberg turned just before she was placed in the electric chair, drew Mrs Evans, the prison matron towards her, and they kissed. The matron was visibly affected. She quickly turned and left. In the corridor outside Rabbi Irving Koslowe could be heard intoning the 23rd Psalm.

The couple were the first civilians in American history to be executed for espionage. The last hope of reprieve for the Rosenbergs vanished early this afternoon when President Eisenhower rejected a final appeal for clemency. The President's decision was announced in the following statement: "I am convinced that the Rosenbergs have received the benefits of every safeguard which American justice can provide. Their original trial and the long series of appeals constitute the fullest measure of justice and due process of law. No Judge has ever expressed any doubt that they committed most serious acts of espionage.

"I am not unmindful of the fact that this case has aroused grave concern both here and abroad in the minds of serious people. I can only say that, by immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of mil lions of innocent people all over the world. I will not intervene."

[Outside Winston Churchill's country home] a deputation scribbled a note addressed "Dear P.M.," asking the Prime Minister to appeal direct "to President Eisenhower over the Transatlantic telephone immediately". They received a typewritten note saying: "It is not within my duty or my power to intervene in this matter. (Signed) Winston Churchill."

At one o'clock this morning in Manchester a crowd of two hundred stood quietly outside the offices of the "Manchester Guardian" waiting for news of the Rosenberg executions. A telegram sent earlier to the Queen had asked her to use her influence towards securing a reprieve.

From The Guardian archive,
June 20 1953,
Rosenbergs executed despite pleas,
G,
Republished 20.6.2007, p. 34,
http://digital.guardian.co.uk/guardian/2007/06/20/pages/ber34.shtml

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