San Quentin News

Written By Incarcerated - Advancing Social Justice

United States resumes federal execution in midst of pandemic

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The federal government has resumed executions during the COVID-19 pandemic, prompting unsuccessful challenges before the U.S. Supreme Court.

One condemned man argued that the use of pentobarbital to carry out his execution would amount to cruel and unusual punishment. The challenges also question whether the reasonable fears of contracting COVID, held by the family of the victims and spiritual advisers were sufficient cause to impose stays.

Three federal prisoners were at the center of these emergency arguments, made necessary by the government’s unexpected and hasty decision to carry out executions in the midst of the pandemic.

Daniel Lewis Lee was put to death July 13, Wesley Ira Purkey was executed July 15, and Dustin Lee Honken was put to death July 17. All three were executed at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana.

Lee maintained his innocence and argued that pentobarbital induces the effect of drowning, and therefore must result in extreme pain. A District Court ruled that his argument had merit, but a 5-4 Supreme Court majority rejected his position.

The majority pointed out that more than 100 pentobarbital executions have been performed without incident. The court also ruled Lee’s request for “last-minute” intervention was improper.

Lee remained strapped to the execution gurney for four hours while the legal jousting played out in the high court. Upon the lifting of the stay, his counsel received no notice of the final ruling, and Lee was executed in the middle of the night.

The family members of Lee’s victims had also filed petitions seeking a stay due to concerns about the potential of being infected by COVID-19 while witnessing the execution, due to the presence of four confirmed cases at the U.S. Penitentiary in Terre Haute, but their request was also denied.

Purkey had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, dementia, and Alzheimer’s. In his case, the Rev. Seigen Hartkemeyer, a 68-year-old Buddhist priest and Purkey’s spiritual adviser, requested a stay because of his own age and physical health issues. He contended that he was being asked to minister to the condemned prisoner at the risk of his own life.

Honken’s spiritual adviser, Mark O’Keefe, a Roman Catholic priest, made the same argument.

The Supreme Court ruled that protective equipment was available for the advisers and that the executions would be carried out, regardless of the risk created by the pandemic.

The US Department of Justice later stated: “Despite the pandemic, the government still must carry out its important duties.”

These federal actions can be contrasted against what occurred in Tennessee, where two executions were delayed when it was decided that it was impossible for the court to provide full and complete due process under present pandemic conditions.

Federal executions are in contrast to trends in the country which are shifting away from capital punishment. In some instances, it has been the inability to attain execution drugs because pharmaceutical firms no longer wish for their products to be utilized in that fashion. But there are growing changes in the use of the death penalty.

A number of states have abolished capital punishment, and its support has waned in the past few decades.

This is happening now in an atmosphere of protests and unrest over inequalities and racial injustice in cities across the nation and the world.
Keith Dwayne Nelson was scheduled for execution on Aug. 28.

Newsom’s stance on death penalty inspires abolitionist movement

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Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom

Governor Newsom’s moratorium on the death penalty in March gave California’s abolition movement new energy.

“There’s this excitement and energy in our movement that we haven’t had in a long time,” said Natasha Minsker, a political consultant and longtime proponent for abolishing capital punishment.

“Grappling with the legacy of their two failed initiatives, advocates are re- assessing their strategy and retooling their message,” said a recent SF Chronicle article. “The governor’s moratorium has given advocates the opportunity to do long-term planning.”

Newsom’s moratorium provided temporary reprieves to more than 730 inmates who sit stationed on San Quentin’s Death Row. The moratorium also removed California’s recently revised lethal injection procedures.

Because the court had recently approved the state’s new lethal injection protocol, Newsom was faced with the reality of overseeing the executions of more than 20 inmates who had exhausted their appeals. The governor said he was not willing to let that scenario happen.

Prior to Newsom’s decision, no one had been executed in California since a federal judge ruled in 2006 that the state’s methods resulted in potentially torturous and painful deaths to condemned prisoners.

Newsom’s moratorium places California’s capital punishment system back into a legal standstill.

Following Newsom’s stand, the efforts of many activists have now been directed to the national stage, where the Trump administration is planning to resume capital punishment.

Three federal executions were scheduled for December before a judge temporarily blocked them. These would have been the first death sentences carried out by the U.S. Government in 16 years.

Governor's moratorium on death penalty has not stop capital sentences

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By Alfred King Journalism Guild Writer

The governor’s moratorium on executions has not stopped some California district attorneys from seeking the death penalty in new cases they prosecute.

District attorneys “across the state have continued to pursue capital charges against defendants,” the Sacramento Bee reported July 17.

Lawyers working on behalf of Cleamon Johnson asked the state Supreme Court on July 1 to halt such prosecutions, the newspaper said.

Johnson is a Los Angeles manaccusedofkillingfive people.

“In light of this paradigm shift, a California jury in a capital case cannot be expected to provide a fair and reasoned penalty-phase de- termination,’ lawyers argued in a petition to the high court.

The court in a similar case halted the death penalty trial, the story said. Those actions indicate the court is taking the argument seriously, said

Robert Sanger one of Johnson’s attorneys.

Prosecutors in their response to the court wrote any concerns about the governor’s moratorium can be handled during jury selection.

“Jurors are routinely asked to set aside these types of things in order to reach a just verdict based on the evidence and the law,” prosecutors claimed.

“The real goal of this petition is to turn Governor Newsom’s moratorium, which is nominally a reprieve, into a judicial abolition of the death penalty in California,” prosecutors wrote.

Some prisoners suffer another form of death penalty

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An alarming number, 80 prisoners, died in Texas jails in a nine month period between Oct. 1, 2017 and July 1, 2018, according to the Bureau of Justice statistics, in an article published by Prison Legal News.

The Texas Commission of Jail Standards (TCJS) is an agency that sets the standards for Texas jails to follow. They perform annual inspections of local jails and prisons. TCJS is also responsible for investigating the deaths in the jails and prisons.

“We shouldn’t look to the TCJS to do what they were never intended to do. We’re putting all our eggs in one basket” said Michele Deitch, lecturer at the LBJ School of Public Affairs in Texas. Deitch is in favor of a statewide ombudsman for the prisons, jails and families, according to the article.

Although the TCJS is responsible for investigating the deaths that occur in Texas jails, no jail was found at fault for any of the 80 deaths. TCJS performs procedures such as: video evidence and documentation review to see if any standards were violated, according to the article.

The investigations can be troublesome. Kenneth Paxton Jr. of the Office of the Attorney General had to order Sheriff Sally Hernandez to comply with record requests. The sheriff’s office had made claims that to provide such information would threaten the security of the guards and its jails.

The sheriff utilized a Texas law loophole that prevents any information, even in death, being released on a person not convicted of a crime, according to the article. Legislation has introduced a bill to prevent this tactic being used in the future.

In 2015, Sandra Bland committed suicide in the Waller County jail. The jail settled with a $1.9 million settlement resulting from her death. The county also created a new law called the Sandra Bland Act, which created policies and procedures for dealing with people with mental health issues.

In 2015, three LaSalle Correction guards in McLennan County were arrested for changing jail logs to appear as if they were in compliance with the mandatory head counts every 30 minutes.

Michael Crittenden, Christopher Simpson and Milton Walker were the guards alleged in the tampering of documents. The charges were prompted by the suicide death of Michael Angelo Martinez on Nov. 1, 2015.

The video from the prison showed the aforementioned guards logged in headcounts they did not perform, reported the Prison Legal News.

“We weren’t checked every hour or every half hour. At maximum we would see the jailers twice a day,” said Barbara Nixon, a nursing student housed at the Anderson County Jail. Adding, “They’d come at the beginning and the end of their shifts. We’d also see them when they brought meals, but that was about it.”

The TCJS standards had recent violations with the Harris County Jail, in which four detainees were left and locked in a transport van overnight in April, 2017. This was followed by the December, 2017 suicide of Maytham Alsaedy, who was scheduled for a guilty plea on capital murder charges.

Debora Lyons committed suicide in August ,2018. In 2019, Evan Parker hanged himself at the Waller County Jail. One month prior to his death, the prison was found to be in non-compliance of several operating standards.

This is the same facility where Sandra Bland committed suicide four years earlier and where the Sandra Bland Act began.

Some attributed the prison deaths to low pay and under- staffing. The commission later was asked for a pay increase by Anderson County Sheriff Greg Taylor, who hoped to recruit more guards to remedy understaffing.

The annual pay was in- creased from $27,000 to $30,000, which is still around $3,000 below the state average pay.

Texas DA to decide his stance on Death Penalty

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Halfway through his first term, Mark Gonzalez, the District Attorney of Nueces County, Texas, is still trying to decide what his stance is on the death penalty, according to the Texas Observer.

Gonzalez, called a “progressive prosecutor” by many, due to his progressive stance on many issues, said he’s conflicted about the death penalty and wants to let the people of Nueces County decide whether capital punishment should stand in the county. He expected to receive a “test case” with a jury, to help him decide what the policy should be.

“I can’t say I’m pro-anything, but I am very pro-giving this and entrusting this to the jury to make the decision,” he told the Observer.

Gonzales and the jury must decide how to handle the case of Arturo Garza. Garza has reportedly admitted to beating his seven-months-pregnant girlfriend Susanna Eguia to death in 2015. Earlier he was charged with two counts of murder—one charge for Susanna and one charge for the unborn infant.

But death penalty attorneys say Gonzalez’s wait- and-see approach avoids the responsibility of his office: determining and advocating for a punishment he thinks is appropriate.

The “progressive prosecutor” movement includes District Attorneys who advocate abandoning the use of the death penalty, decriminalizing marijuana possession, sending low-level offenders

to rehabilitative courses instead of jail, seeking shorter sentences, and “vowing to aggressively prosecute police-involved shootings.”

Some District Attorneys who are considered progressive still pursue death sentences despite the trend away from capital punishment, its high monetary costs, ineffectiveness in deterring crime and its disproportionate use against people of color.

District Attorney Kim Ogg of Harris County, who has pushed for marijuana decriminalization and bail reform, said she pursues the death penalty only under extreme cases.

Ogg consults with a capital review committee of senior prosecutors to help her vet these cases.

Though Gonzalez also consults with his prosecutors about capital cases, during an interview with a reporter, he didn’t cite a criteria or process for when to pursue a death sentence. “We know when it may be an option that we consider and we definitely know when it’s not,” he said.

According to the Observer, Garza’s is one of six cases in which the death penalty continued to be a possibility for juries in Gonzalez’s first two years Garza’s appointed law- yer, Richard Rogers, said that for months his client has been willing to plead to life-without-parole in order to avoid a trial and possible death sentence. Rogers feels strongly that the state should accept Garza’s plea offer. “Because bottom line: Either way the guy is going to die in prison.”

California Death Row prisoner qualifies under new felony murder rule

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Demetrius Howard is on California’s Death Row for a crime in which he did not kill anyone. He was never accused of firing a shot, but based on California’s felony murder rule then in effect, he was eligible for a death sentence due to his participation in the crime, reported The Appeal.

The felony murder rule was revised in 2018 so that participants in a crime do not face a death penalty unless they directly killed, or encouraged the killing, or otherwise “acted with reckless indifference to human life” when commit- ting their crime.

Howard has maintained during his trial and over time that he never intended for anyone to be killed during the crime. However, Howard is ineligible for re-sentencing under the new felony murder rule because his jury found he had acted with reckless indifference to human life, according to a Death Penalty Information Center online post by The Appeal.

“I am no saint or some angel. I’ve made my share of wrongs, but I haven’t killed no one [or] told anyone to kill someone,” Howard wrote to The Appeal.

Howard’s case stems from a 1995 conviction in which an- other man, Mitchell Funches, shot and killed Sherry Collins during a robbery. Funches received a sentence of life with- out parole in his trial; Howard landed on Death Row in his court trial.

Nineteen other states have similar laws, allowing capital punishment for people who are not charged with murder nor the intention to murder. Texas has executed at least six prisoners when there was undisputed evidence that they never participated in the actual murder, according to the article.

Howard’s conviction was delivered in San Bernardino County, which is one of a group of five Southern California counties nicknamed “the new death belt,” because from 2010 through 2015 those counties imposed more death sentences than 99.5% of U.S. counties, according to The Appeal. At the time of Howard’s trial, there were 10 active death penalty cases in San Bernardino County.

“That’s higher than I’ve ever seen it. At any given time in the past the number pending seemed to be about six,” said Dennis Kottmeier, then District Attorney, referencing the number of active death row cases in his county. He attributed the high numbers to state laws passed in 1990 and 1993 that expanded the list of crimes eligible for capital punishment, as well as higher violent crime rates.

According to a 2017 report by the California Attorney General, San Bernardino’s high number of capital punishment cases did not lower the county’s overall murder rate, which has remained higher than average from 1997 through 2017, despite a declining rate statewide.

Amnesty International urges death penalty repeal

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“Two wrongs don’t make a right. The death penalty is no way to impart justice,” says Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas Director at Amnesty International.
In 2016, the US Supreme Court in Hurst v. Florida ruled that Florida’s capital sentencing law was unconstitutional. Yet, despite the ruling, Florida still has the second-largest death row in the nation and is fourth in the number of executions since 1976.
Amnesty International wants Florida to abolish their death penalty but it’s an uphill battle.
A new report released by Amnesty International, which focuses on three groups of death row inmates, shows that youth offenders and those with serious mental and intellectual disabilities are being taken advantage of by Florida’s capital sentencing laws.
The report calls into question the validity of executing those with serious mental illness, who are unfairly being labeled the “worst of the worst.” The report shows that prisoners with an intellectual disability, young adults with a mental maturity lower than that of an 18 year old, and those with a background of extreme deprivation and abuse, are at risk.

Amnesty’s goal is to convince Florida’s governor and his cabinet to commute the death sentences of all prisoners on death row.
Another problem the report reveals is how race influences who gets executed. Since 1976, not a single White person has been executed for killing a Black person. Whereas almost one fifth of the executions in this same time period involved Black defendants convicted of killing White victims.
Amnesty’s opposition to Florida’s death penalty is unconditional and absolute. Amnesty also wants Florida’s judges and juries to be made aware of a defendant’s mental health status and age before imposing the sentence of death.
Despite Amnesty’s urging, Florida remains a staunch believer in the death penalty. In response to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Florida’s legislation has revised its death penalty statute so executions could resume. In fact, Florida’s Supreme Court has even made the retroactive effect of Hurst only available to a limited group of cases,
cutting off almost half of the 400 people on Florida’s death row from a new sentencing hearing.
Mathew Marshall is one such person. He was 24 when he was convicted of murder in 1988. Although the jury unanimously voted to sentence him to life in prison, the judge overruled the decision and sentenced him to death. “The USA must stop resorting to the ultimate cru- el, inhuman and degrading punishment, and join the 142 countries that are abolitionist in law or practice today,” says Erika Guevara Rosas for Amnesty International.

CA leads nation in women on Death Row

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Courtesy of CDCR

A female inmate sitting on the Death Row yard


California leads the nation with 23 women on Death Row, but the condemned women are largely invisible and forgotten behind bars, and their stories rarely see the light of day.
California has more than three times the number of condemned women in Texas (six on condemn) and in Alabama (five on condemn), according a Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) report.
The women on California’s Death Row are housed in Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF) in Chowchilla. Until 1933, they were housed in San Quentin in the Women’s Ward. They were relocated to California Institution for Women at Tehachapi, which opened that same year.
“There is far less conflict be- tween the women on Death Row than with men,” Linda Fox, a paralegal who recently retired from the California Appellate Project, told San Quentin News. “They look out for each other— they have a different sort of experience. They interact in a different way; it’s a different community.”
Fox worked with attorneys on death row cases and had the opportunity to visit the women.

“I think they are less iso- lated than the men, but they are isolated from the rest of the women population. It’s a prison within a prison,” Fox said. “I know men do a lot of bonding in prison; they make friends they would not make otherwise, but for the women, it’s like a family.”
According to a sergeant at CCWF, women on condemned row have access to hobby crafts, religious programs and to Adult Basic Education and the Voluntary Education Program (VEP). They can also take college courses via the mail.
Most women on Death Row are there because they killed a husband or hired someone to do it, or because they killed their children, Fox noted.
Catherine Thompson, whom Fox said she worked with, has been on Death Row since 1993.
“Cathy is probably 60 now.
Courtesy of CDCR

Housing unit for Death Row inmates


She’s African American; she has a son who is pretty successful; she’s a very articulate woman. She is college educated,” Fox said.
Thompson was convicted as the mastermind of her husband’s murder. But there was no direct evidence presented by prosecutors that proved her involvement, according to “Women on Death Row in California,” an article in ThoughtCo.com. But the jury found her guilty, and she was sentenced to death.
All her accomplices received lesser sentences, including the shooter, who was found guilty and received a life sentence.
“There’s a great sadness in your heart knowing you’re going to die and going to leave the people you love,” Maureen McDermott, the first woman in California to be sentenced to the death penalty since capital punishment was reinstated in 1978, told the Los Angeles Times back in 1992. “But I’m not afraid to die. If they want to murder me, let them murder me. My life is ruined anyway.”
At the age of 44, McDermott became the first woman condemned to death in California since its reinstitution in 1978. She is in now her seventies.
The last woman executed in California was Elizabeth Ann “Ma” Duncan, 58, on Aug. 8, 1962. She was convicted of hiring two people to murder her pregnant daughter-in-law. There have only been four women executed in California since 1893.
The Chowchilla prison, which was opened in 1990, converted a housing unit to hold 10 women on a top floor, and the bottom floor became a common area and an exercise area.
Since the increase in the number of women on California’s Death Row, the bottom floor now houses more women, and they have their own exercise yard.
“What kind of life is this?
Waking up every morning to a cement wall is an unbearable future,” said McDermott in the L.A. Times article. “I sometimes think the gas chamber is better than staring at these walls for the rest of my life.”
As of 2018, there were 55 women on death row in America. There have been 16 women executed since 1976 — two by electrocution, the rest by lethal injection, the DPIC report said.
Emma LeDoux holds the distinction of being the first woman ever sentenced to death in California in 1906. In 1907 she complained about her notoriety:
“It seems that it is not enough for people to crowd and block the streets to stare at me, as if I were some sort of a Fourth of July horrible. Now they must start these rumors,” LeDoux said. “In justice to myself, I’m glad you came.” But she avoided the hangman when she was granted a retrial after appealing her case. She was eventually released to parole in 1920 but wound up back in prison in 1931, where she died in 1941.

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Arkansas judge faces sanction for blocking lethal injection

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An Arkansas judge faces judicial sanction for blocking the state’s use of a lethal injection drug on the same day he pro- tested the death penalty out- side the governor’s mansion, reported The Associated Press.
The Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission charged Judge Wendell Griffen, a Pulaski County Circuit Judge, with violating ethics rules in June. The three- member panel cited the judge’s online and social media comments against the death penalty as evidence of an ethical violation.
Griffen asked a judicial ethics commission to dismiss the complaint against him in August.
“This is a case really about optics and not about ethics,” said Austin Porter Jr., Griffen’s attorney, during the commission hearing.
Porter also said the case “runs afoul” of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that permitted judges to speak out on social and legal issues and a separate decision that bars excluding jurors from capital punishment cases based on their moral or religious objections.
Arkansas executed four inmates last year using lethal injection. Judge Griffen had blocked this method of execution earlier in the year, which led to the judicial commission’s charge of ethics violations.
The commission did not immediately issue a ruling on Griffen’s case but is expected to hold a full hearing this fall on its findings, during which it could advise the State Supreme Court to suspend or remove the judge.
Griffen has appealed the initial decision and asked for full review in the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals pertaining to his case.

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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.

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