San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

Texas court updates death penalty protocols

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A Texas court implemented updated protocols for Death Row prisoners with intellectual disabilities. The revised standards came after the U.S. Supreme Court had set aside Texas prisoner Bobby Moore’s execution, Reuters reports.
The new protocols allowed the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to reinstate Moore’s death sentence.

U.S. Supreme Court


Moore, 58, was convicted of murder in 1980. He was sentenced to execution, but the execution was set aside by the U.S. Supreme Court because of its 2002 ruling that the execution of inmates with intellectual disabilities is “cruel and unusual punishment.”
A 2017 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg concerning the Moore case, ruled against Texas’ system for measuring the intellect of defendants, because it was found to be “deficient.”
This 2017 Supreme Court decision came a month after a psychologist had testified that another Texas inmate facing execution was more likely to reoffend because he was Black. Chief Justice John Roberts said that the comment was a “noxious strain of racial prejudice.”
However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, announced in June that it had revised its standards to better reflect modern medical thinking and abide by U.S. Supreme Court directives. “Under its new protocols, inmate Bobby Moore, 58, can be executed,” the Texas court said.
PPI’s “Correctional Control: Incarceration and Supervision by State” is the first report to aggregate data on all types of correctional control nationwide.

Pope calls teaching capital punishment inadmissible

Mississippi’s approach to ‘making America safe again’

States seeking lethal injection cocktails from black market

Letter to the Editor by John A. Riccardi

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Dear Mr. Richardson, Editor in Chief,

I entered Death Row in East Block (San Quentin State Prison) on September 29, 1996. I received a reversal on the death penalty on July 16, 2012. On July 14, 2016, I was moved from San Quentin to D.V.I. at Tracy, Calif. As of today, I have been here in the reception center for 165 days. I was told I would only be here no more than a few weeks, no more than two months.

I would then be moved to another facility where I would be on the mainline, able to once again use the phone, receive all my property, TV, typewriter, hot pot, etc. All this time, I cannot call my attorney, relatives or friends. I cannot even boil water for a cup of tea. I am 81 years old. I hope to be sent to San Luis Obispo – C.M.C.

My main reason for writing to the SQ News is an article on the front page about C.O. Cuevas, on how three inmates saved Mr. Cuevas’ life. Kudos to those three guys. I was elated that Mr. Cuevas is still with us. SQ News is not easy to come by in here.

I was on Death Row for 20 years, knew Mr. Cuevas for many years. I respected him as a C.O. and most of all as a friend.  Whenever he came into East Block, He would always say hello to me. My cell was 2-62, the first cell on the end tier so I had a bird’s eye view of the rotunda.

I would like to see in more detail and a picture with Mr. Cuevas together with the inmates who saved his life.

You should also bring it to the attention of channel 5 (KPIX 5, a CBS affiliate station) evening news. Cuevas’ favorite is Roberta Gonzales, who was the weather lady and now I think is an on-scene reporter.

How great would it be for Mr. Cuevas to be interviewed by Roberta and a picture with her and Mr. Cuevas? Mr. Cuevas would be thrilled just to meet Roberta! There should be more C.O.s like Mr. Cuevas who always has a smile for everyone.

Sincerely,

John A. Riccardi

http://sanquentinnews.com/the-100th-edition-san-quentin-news/

Death Row inmate freed after serving more than 25 years

Nitrogen gas could be new method for executions

VOICES FROM THE ROW

Death Row inmate freed after serving more than 25 years

US Supreme Court Death Row case Hidalgo v. Arizona Arizona death penalty law

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In the coming months, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to take up a challenge to the death penalty in Arizona. If the justices agree to hear the case, the court’s decision could also affect the California death penalty law. 

And that could spare the lives of 746 prisoners on California’s death row, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The pending case, Hidalgo v. Arizona, challenges the new Arizona death penalty law, which makes virtually every first-degree murder subject to potential capital charges.

With 343 homicides in 2017, Baltimore “had the highest murder rate in its history, and by far the highest among the nation’s 30 largest cities,” according to The New York Times 1-17-18

Lawyers for Abel Hidalgo argue that the Arizona law violates Supreme Court precedent dating back to the 1970s that limits capital punishment to specific categories of crime, including especially heinous killers often described as the “worst of the worst.”

Much like Arizona, California has also expanded its definition of capital crimes, which, according to retired Arizona prosecutor and judge Rudolph Gerber, “made the vast majority of murders eligible for the death penalty.”

Even though the California law is not before the Supreme Court, the pending Hidalgo case might reshape California law—a situation that mirrors another legal decision in 1972.

That year, the Supreme Court overturned Georgia’s death penalty law because the state failed to set meaningful standards separating especially heinous crimes from other serious felonies and limiting the discretion of prosecutors and jurors.

That 1972 ruling extended to California and other states, resulting in California resentencing their condemned inmates to life in prison from the previous death sentence.

The Arizona case is comparable to the 1972 Georgia case, “a substantive decision that was applied retroactively to everyone on Death Row across the country,” said Robert Dunham, the Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

But if the Supreme Court does not take up the case, many prisoners will remain eligible for the death penalty.

Hidalgo’s lawyers said research indicates that over an 11-year period in Arizona’s most populous county, Maricopa, 99 percent of all first-degree murderers could have been prosecuted as a capital crime.

“Arizona’s death penalty statute, once narrowly drawn, now provides prosecutors and jurors with unfettered discretion,” Hidalgo’s lawyers argued in their appeal to the Arizona Supreme Court. California, Colorado and Missouri, the lawyers said, have similar laws.

Research conducted at the University of Iowa on California crimes from 1978 to 2002 found that 95 percent of first-degree convictions could have been charged under the current law as capital crimes, punishable by the death penalty or life without parole.

The Supreme Court must now decide if it will take up the case. As of February 28, 2018, the Court had not made a decision to accept or reject the appeal. Until then, the Arizona State Supreme Court decision upholding the law will remain intact.

If the Supreme Court takes up the case, oral arguments and a ruling will take place during the 2018-19 term, which is scheduled to begin in October.

https://sanquentinnews.com/pope-calls-teachings-capital-punishment-inadmissible/
https://sanquentinnews.com/tennessee-schedules-three-executions-nearly-decadethere-60-inmates-tennessees-death-row-awaiting-execution/

2017’s low executions only 23

Nitrogen gas could be new method for executions

Republicans aim to end America’s death penalty

Death Row inmate freed after serving more than 25 years

Nevada plans to use execute using combination of unproven drugs

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Nevada plans to use a combination of drugs for an execution that has never been used and its effectiveness is unproven, an investigative Global News story reports.

Despite the growing opioid epidemic plaguing a large number of U.S. and Canadian communities, Nevada Department of Corrections wants to use fentanyl in an upcoming execution, the Aug. 31 story reported.

According to author Andrew Russell, “Scott Dozier, 46, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Nov. 14 for the 2002 murder of 22-year old Jeremiah Miller who was killed and dismembered. Dozier was already serving a 22-year sentence for the murder of Jasen Green, 27, whose body was also dismembered.

After years of using midazolam and hydromorphone as sedatives, pharmaceutical manufacturer Pfizer halted sale of its products to the Department of Corrections in 2016 in order to stop them from being used in executions, Russell reported.

After conferring with its chief medical officer, the correctional department’s director selected the combination of diazepam, fentanyl and cisatracurium, Russell reported.

Lethal injections typically involved a three-drug cocktail including a sedative to render the person unconscious, a muscle relaxant to paralyze them, followed by a fatal injection, according to Russell.

“This type of execution “is way out of step with our core values in this state”

“Fentanyl, an opioid that can be 100 times stronger than morphine, will be used in addition to diazepam, a sedative commonly known as Valium, and cisatracurium, which causes paralysis,” he explained.

This type of execution “is way out of step with our core values in this state,” said Tod Story, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada. “Nevadans deserve answers on exactly how the state plans to kill a prisoner in its custody.”

Each drug carries its own set of inherent risks when used in a multi-drug execution procedure. Those risks are magnified when we don’t know the source of the drug, the potency and purity of the drug, and circumstances in which it was manufactured, transported and stored,” said Robert Durham of the Death Penalty Information Center.

Durham further states, “These drugs share the problem with all the other drugs states have proposed to use in executions. None was designed to kill people.”

Experts and civil rights groups question the combination of these drugs because they have never been used before.

There is no recorded documentation of its effectiveness or the legality of its use, especially since the manufacturers of these drugs halted the sale of the product to the department, said Russell.

States seeking lethal injection cocktails from black market


https://sanquentinnews.com/pope-calls-teachings-capital-punishment-inadmissible/

Alabama considering asphyxia for execution

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Alabama is considering use of nitrogen asphyxia as a third option to execute prisoners.

“If SB12 is passed, Alabama would become the second state (Oklahoma is the other) to offer nitrogen asphyxiation, also known as nitrogen hypoxia, as a death penalty option,” the Montgomery Advertiser reported.

gas chamber

gas chamber

Nitrogen is painless and easier to administer, said Sen. Trip Pittman, R-Montrose, the bill’s author. Nitrogen makes up 78 percent of the atmosphere and is harmless when inhaled with oxygen, the newspaper reported April 5.

Alabama had also considered execution by firing squad, but the nitrogen option was substituted. Current options are lethal injection and electric chair.

“No country has actually used it (nitrogen) for death penalty purposes”

Oklahoma passed a similar bill in 2015, although the method has not been used.

“No country has actually used it (nitrogen) for death penalty purposes, although deaths due to nitrogen asphyxiation have been documented and studied,” the newspaper reported.

A study released in 2003 by the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board found that 80 people died from incidentally inhaling pure nitrogen between 1992 and 2002.

Although there is concern in some quarters about the safety of nitrogen, Pittman maintains that nitrogen hypoxia is more humane and easier to implement that other methods. “It is very effective. It’s also very plentiful in terms of supply,” he said.

https://sanquentinnews.com/republicans-aim-end-americas-death-penalty/

Tennessee schedules three executions


https://sanquentinnews.com/the-100th-edition-san-quentin-news/

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