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Thread: Idaho Capital Punishment News

  1. #11
    Senior Member Frequent Poster PATRICK5's Avatar
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    Defense attys aren't nuts. They don't want their home addresses and telephone numbers made public and neither do judges. Why? Because they don't want to be harassed and they really don't want their families harassed. But that is what they want to allow to happen to the members of the execution team. I say if they insist on making info about the execution team public - tit for tat.
    Obama ate my dad

  2. #12
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Idaho Daily Statesman, May 7, 1909 photo
    The Idaho Daily Statesman on May 7, 1909, published this picture of a formal invitation the newspaper had received from the state prison warden, for its reporter to cover the execution of Fred Seward.



    News media witnesses at executions an Idaho tradition

    As Idaho’s news media spar with the state in federal court over limits on access to executions, the case has turned a spotlight onto Idaho’s long and consistent history of media witnesses attending its state executions to serve as the eyes and ears of the public. In fact, media witnesses have been present for all but one Idaho execution since 1901, and published detailed accounts of them.

    “The body swung not to the right and left, the rope made not a single twist, but facing the sun in the eastern sky, like one standing erect, all that was mortal of Ed Rice was there before his fellows, while the tide of life fast ebbed away,” the Idaho Daily Statesman reported in 1901, recounting the first state execution held at Idaho’s state prison.

    Prior to 1901, executions were conducted at the county level in Idaho, and most were public, with hundreds attending.

    Idaho’s news media, including the Associated Press, The Spokesman-Review, the Idaho Press Club and more than a dozen other news outlets and organizations, are suing in federal court over Idaho’s current execution procedures, which bar witnesses from the first portion of the lethal injection procedure, when the condemned prisoner is strapped down to a gurney and IVs are inserted.

    The media have been in discussions with the state over the issue since before Paul Ezra Rhoades was executed in November, but the state has refused to change its procedure. Now, another Idaho execution is scheduled: Richard Leavitt is scheduled to die by lethal injection on June 12.

    The lawsuit cites a 2002 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision that held it was a violation of the 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution to exclude media witnesses, and by extension the public, from the full procedure, from the moment the condemned person enters the execution chamber to the time of death. That case was brought by the news media in California. However, only two states in the 9th Circuit - California and Nevada - have been complying with the 2002 decision.

    U.S. District Judge Edward Lodge is now considering arguments from the media and from the state, which has defended its procedures; he is expected to rule shortly. The state has argued that allowing witnesses to view the first portion of the procedure would violate the condemned prisoner’s privacy, could impact other Death Row inmates, would cause suffering for the prisoner’s family and friends, and could identify members of the execution team. However, the team is masked and wears surgical garb.

    “Few of us know with any certainty when or how we will die,” the state’s attorneys wrote in legal filings. “If we did, would we want our full gamut of emotion, or our contemplation of eternity or cessation of existence, or our regret or defiance, on display? Or would we prefer some final, private moments during the arrangements for the execution before the curtain is opened?”

    The media, in legal papers filed Monday, argued that 1st Amendment concerns outweigh those issues, and that inmates’ privacy rights are limited.

    “Witness attendance at an execution assures public involvement in the process, and transparency fuels informed public debate, which is the main purpose behind granting a right of access to governmental proceedings,” wrote the news media’s attorney, Charles Brown of Lewiston.

    No such questions were raised in the early days of Idaho executions, when news reporters had full access to the entire execution process.

    In 1901, the Idaho Daily Statesman reporter, Fred Flood, wrote that he and other newsmen were ushered into Rice’s cell, to hear the death warrant read to the condemned man, after the warden “stated that only those present in a religious, official or reportical capacity could enter the cell, on account of its size.”

    They then followed the prisoner to the gallows where he would be hanged, and reported in detail on the entire procedure, up to when guards placed the body in a coffin and “carried it to one of the small houses on the (prison) grounds.”

    Similar detailed, first-hand accounts were published in the newspapers of the day of executions carried out at the Idaho State Penitentiary in 1904, 1906, 1909, 1924 and 1926.

    In 1909, the Idaho Daily Statesman published a photograph of a hand-written, elaborately lettered invitation/ticket the newspaper had received the day before from Warden John W. Snook, stating, “Admit Reporter Boise Statesman, To the execution of Fred Seward, May 7th, at 8 o’clock a.m.” The warden signed his name at the bottom with a flourish.

    The only state execution at which members of the Idaho news media weren’t present was a hurry-up double hanging in the middle of the night in 1951, when a frightened prison warden who feared inmate riots refused all requests from outside witnesses, had the gallows erected starting at 5 p.m. for the midnight execution, and had all traces of them removed by morning. The hanging of the two men, ages 20 and 21, was highly controversial due to their age; they had murdered a local grocer.

    At Idaho’s last hanging in 1957, several newspaper reporters were present but declined, at the final moment, to enter the observation room at the new indoor gallows. There, a dozen witnesses saw the condemned man, Raymond Allen Snowden, strapped to a full-length backboard, fall awkwardly through the trap door and take 15 minutes to die.

    Prison guard Mark Maxwell, who attended the execution, told an Idaho Oral History Center interviewer in 1981, “There was two or three newspaper guys here. … They didn’t want in - they all waited out here.”

    Idaho has conducted two executions since 1957, both by lethal injection. At each of those, media witnesses were admitted to the execution chamber and documented what they saw.

    Associated Press reporter Bob Fick was among the witnesses at the execution of Keith Eugene Wells in 1994. In a 2011 National Public Radio interview, he remembered the lethal injection procedure as “sterile and antiseptic,” in contrast to Wells’ crime, in which Wells beat his two victims to death with a baseball bat at a Boise bar.

    In November of 2011, Idaho executed triple murderer Paul Ezra Rhoades. Four media witnesses attended and shared their observations with other reporters and the public in a pooled arrangement. Idaho Press-Tribune reporter Nate Green said the procedure was “very quiet and somber.” He also reported that once Rhoades was dead, a friend of one of Rhoades’ victims muttered, “The devil has gone home.”

    http://www.spokesman.com/stories/201...aho-tradition/
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  3. #13
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    THE ASSOCIATED PRESS v OTTER

    Court sides with news groups in execution case

    A federal appeals court has sided with The Associated Press and 16 other news organizations in ruling that witnesses should have full viewing access to Idaho's upcoming execution.

    The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued the decision Friday in a lawsuit filed by the news organizations seeking to change Idaho's lethal injection process, saying it's unconstitutionally restrictive.

    The lawsuit aims to strike down a portion of Idaho's regulations that prevent witnesses -- including reporters acting as representatives of the public -- from watching executions until after catheters have been inserted into the veins of death row inmates.

    It's unclear how the ruling will affect the scheduled execution next week of Idaho death row inmate Richard Leavitt.

    http://www.wgme.com/template/inews_w...wgme.com.shtml
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  4. #14
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    Idaho high court considers death penalty reviews

    The Idaho Supreme Court is deciding just how much of each death penalty case they must consider under Idaho's mandatory review law. The ruling could change the landscape of capital punishment in Idaho.

    The issue arose in the case of Timothy Dunlap. He's sentenced to death in Idaho for the 1991 murder of Tonya Crane in Soda Springs and in Ohio for the murder of Belinda Bolanos.

    State attorney LaMont Anderson wants the justices to define what they will consider during a mandatory review. He says that will keep defendants from constantly raising new sentencing issues in federal appeals.

    But defense attorney Shannon Romero says the Idaho Supreme Court has an obligation to consider all aspects of a death sentence.

    The justices didn't say when they would issue a decision.

    http://www.timesunion.com/news/artic...#ixzz2BfiBYALN
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  5. #15
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    Fight over insanity defense will return in Idaho

    Darrell Payne. Ethan Windom. Joseph Duncan. John Delling.

    Those are some names of infamous murderers known to Treasure Valley residents, whose attorneys at one time or another said were not treated fairly by an Idaho justice system that does not allow for a traditional insanity defense.

    Payne is on Idaho’s death row. Delling and Windom are serving life prison sentences. Duncan has three federal death penalty sentences and is being held in a federal prison in Seattle.

    The defense argument is pretty simple: Those men were so severely mentally ill when they committed their crimes that they should have been allowed to use that as a defense in a criminal case. They say Idaho’s lack of insanity defense is unconstitutional.

    The Idaho Supreme Court has rejected the last six appeals on the issue, stretching back to 1990 and including a request by Delling’s lawyers in 2011.

    The U.S. Supreme Court announced last month it would not hear Delling’s appeal, effectively ending his criminal case and reinforcing Idaho’s decision — along with Montana, Utah, and Kansas — not to allow a traditional insanity defense.

    For now. That hasn’t stopped defense lawyers from filing appeals in the past. And they will file appeals again. But with Delling’s appeal shot down, it’s unclear when attorneys in Idaho will summon the will to try once again.

    Delling, apparently driven by internal voices to kill two men and injure a third on a multi-state spree, was considered the best chance to get the U.S. Supreme Court to debate the Idaho insanity defense. Delling’s lawyers, police, prosecutors and 4th District Judge Deborah Bail all agreed that Delling’s mental illness led him to become a killer. The lack of an “insanity defense” became the defining issue of his case,

    ”We won’t get a better case than we did with Delling,” said Sarah Thomas, the Idaho appellate state defender.

    One encouraging thing for advocates is that justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor said they would have heard the case. That was one judge short of the four votes required for the court to hear the case. Breyer even wrote a public dissent, saying justices should consider whether Idaho’s modification of the insanity defense is consistent with the 14th Amendment’s promise of “due process.”

    But the discouraging thing is that advocates have to wait for a new justice to add a fourth vote.

    “I guess it’s encouraging that we are on their radar, and they might consider it someday,” Thomas said. “I don’t think our (Idaho) Supreme Court will ever overrule this. They have denied it too many times already.”

    FEW APPEALS

    For those reasons, Thomas is pretty sure her office won’t be filing any “writ of certiorari” appeals about the insanity defense soon. That process requires an incredible amount of work and needs to be a case where there is significant and compelling evidence that the convicted person — like Delling — is suffering from a deep and profound mental illness.

    Of the six cases rejected by Idaho’s top court, two were deemed strong enough for defense attorneys to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. In addition to Delling, the other was the 1991 Mitchell Odiaga murder case in Blaine County. Odiaga was a U.S. postal worker from Boise who shot two people on the streets of Hailey.

    Jeffrey Fisher, a Stanford Law School professor specializing in the Supreme Court who worked on the Delling case, said he could understand why Idaho lawyers may be discouraged. But he sees progress.

    “It is unfortunate — we would have loved to have the court take the (Delling) case, but in the past, we’ve gone to a place where petitions have fallen on deaf ears,” Fisher said. “Now, we have three justices saying we should have a serious review of what Idaho is doing, and that is a significant step forward. A fair reading of (Breyer’s dissent) is that they have real misgivings about Idaho law.”

    Fisher said he, like his Idaho counterparts, feels re-establishing the insanity defense is a matter of basic fairness.

    “I am persuaded from the extraordinarily deep history, across centuries of Anglo-American law, that someone who is truly incapable of knowing right from wrong should be allowed” the insanity defense, he said. “I don’t think states are entitled to abandon that principle.”

    A ROLE IN SENTENCING

    The Idaho Legislature banned the insanity defense amid the national outcry over the acquittal of would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr., who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

    Boise defense attorney David Leroy, who was Idaho’s attorney general when the state did away with the insanity defense in 1982, explained the rationale for the change in 2009.

    “Idaho eliminated the insanity defense in the old English common law sense. That is the argument that the defendant was out of touch with reality and didn’t understand the consequences of their actions,” Leroy said. “We determined in 1982 that a better test (for insanity) would be to ask the jury to examine the specific mental state of the defendant at the time of the crime for the presence or absence of a specific element.

    “Since the prosecutor must prove all elements of the crime to convict, the absence of such proof as to a mental element still constitutes a defense.”

    Lawyers in Idaho trials can still offer evidence of mental illness for mitigation purposes, but not as a defense. And it is a factor in sentencing: Analysis of Delling’s mental illness was a major part of the presentence reports and his sentencing hearing.

    “In the absence of an insanity defense, Delling is still able to present a defense; it just takes a different form,” the Idaho Supreme Court said in denying Delling’s appeal in 2011. “If the state cannot prove criminal intent beyond a reasonable doubt, a defendant, sane or not, will be found not guilty.”

    In his dissent, Breyer pointed out that Idaho’s standard for the insanity defense differs from other states: Idaho permits the conviction of someone “who knew what he was doing but had no capacity to understand it was wrong.”

    Fisher said that uncertainty over what the insanity defense allows and doesn’t allow in Idaho is an encouraging sign for the next challenge. Whenever that may be.

    http://www.idahostatesman.com/2012/1...#storylink=cpy
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  6. #16
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    Idaho Oversight Committee To Examine Death Penalty System, Water Quality, Health and Welfare Structure

    The Idaho Legislature's Joint Legislative Oversight Committee—which drills into specific issues months prior to a legislative session—considered 11 requests from 20 Idaho legislators this year. On March 14, the panel decided to take up five of the requests:

    - A review on Idaho water quality programs. The request sought input on how to set appropriate water quality standards while considering the wide range of stakeholders involved in the current decision-making process.
    - An examination of juvenile custody confinement. The request raised concerns about Idaho's high rate of juveniles in custody and asked for a study of the adequacy and effectiveness of re-entry programs designed to help reduce confinement rates.
    - A review of idaho's death penalty system. The request asked the committee to look at how death penalty costs compare to a sentence of life in prison and to identify potential savings or efficiencies.
    - A review of the organization and structure of the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. The request asked to examine the department's structure and how it sizes up against other states.
    - A creation of a taxpayer advocacy office. The request asked for a consideration of an office to help balance the collection obligation of the State Tax Commission with the welfare of Idaho taxpayers.

    The committee expects to release two reports as early as this fall: on the creation of a taxpayer advocacy office and the examination of the structure of the Department of Health and Welfare. The remaining three studies are expected to be released during the 2014 legislative session.

    http://www.boiseweekly.com/CityDesk/...fare-structure
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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  7. #17
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    Report: Idaho Doesn't Know Total Cost Of Death Penalty

    A new report from Idaho's state auditors shows that sentencing a defendant to life in prison without parole is more expensive than imposing the death penalty.

    But the Office of Performance Evaluations also found that the state's criminal justice agencies don't collect enough data to determine the total cost of the death penalty. Hannah Crumrine and Tony Grange presented the report to the Joint Legislative Oversight Committee Wednesday morning.

    Idaho Gov. C.L. "Butch" Otter wrote a letter responding to the report, stating he believes state agencies have been diligent in accounting for and containing their costs. Otter wrote that though the report raises the question of whether tax dollars are spent wisely on capital punishment, he continues to support the death penalty laws.

    Idaho has executed three people since 1977.

    http://boisestatepublicradio.org/pos...-death-penalty
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

    "Y'all be makin shit up" ~ Markeith Loyd

  8. #18
    Weidmann1939
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    Typical bean counters report. Accountants know or seek to know the cost of everything, but give nary a fig about the value of anything. How does one calculate a price for justice. How much is a murder victim's life worth?

  9. #19
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Idaho's Death Row now down to nine, after Stuart's sentence reduced to life

    Idaho’s Death Row is down to nine offenders, one woman and eight men, now that Gene Francis Stuart has had his sentence reduced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Stuart pleaded guilty to murder by torture in the 1981 beating death of 3-year-old Robert Miller, the son of Stuart’s then girlfriend, and was sentenced to death, but after appeals, was granted a new sentencing hearing in 2013. The Lewiston Tribune reports he’s now agreed to a plea bargain in which he will never be released from prison and he gives up all rights to appeal.

    Those remaining on Idaho’s Death Row are Azad Abdullah, sentenced to death in 2004 for the murder by arson of his wife, Angie; David Card, sentenced to death in 1989 for the shooting deaths of two people in Canyon County; Thomas Creech, sentenced to death in 1983 for the beating death of another inmate while serving a life sentence for two other murders; Timothy Dunlap, sentenced to death in 1992 for killing a woman during a bank robbery in Caribou County; Zane Fields, sentenced to death in 1991 for a murder by stabbing in Ada County; James Hairston, sentenced to death in 1996 for shooting two people to death in Bannock County; Erick Hall, sentenced to death in 2004 for raping and murdering two women in Ada County; Gerald Pizzuto, sentenced to death in 1986 for beating two people to death in Idaho County; and Robin Row, sentenced to death in 1993 for the murders by arson of her husband, son and daughter in Ada County.

    Idaho has carried out three executions since the state’s death penalty was reinstated in 1977: Keith Wells in 1994, who waived his appeals and asked that his execution be carried out; Paul Ezra Rhoades in 2011; and Richard Leavitt in 2012.

    Two former Idaho Death Row inmates were released: Charles Fain was exonerated and released in 2001, after serving 18 years; and Donald Paradis moved off Death Row in 1996 after his sentence was commuted amid questions about his original conviction; he was released in 2001 after pleading guilty to being an accessory to murder.

    Idaho’s Death Row inmates are kept in their cells 23 hours a day. They have the option of being in an outside recreation area for one hour a day. The only other time they are out of their 12-foot by seven-foot cells is when they are escorted to the shower, meeting with an attorney or being given medical care; there’s more info here.

    http://www.spokesman.com/blogs/boise...-reduced-life/

  10. #20
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Idaho Department Of Correction Can Keep Lethal Injection Drugs Secret, Judge Says

    By James Dawson
    Boise State Public Radio

    The Idaho Department of Correction doesn’t have to release information about which drugs it used to execute two inmates or where it got them from – at least for now.

    In May, an Idaho judge ruled state correction officials had to hand over records and receipts of any drug used in the executions of Paul Ezra Rhoades and Richard Leavitt.

    The order also required the department to release records of drugs bought for future executions to a University of Idaho law professor and the ACLU of Idaho who filed the suit.

    Monday morning, Judge Lynn Norton ordered a new trial to determine whether the state has to disclose these records.

    “We’ll go to trial and once again prove that secrecy around lethal injection in particular is harmful to the public interest," says Ritchie Eppink, legal director for ACLU of Idaho.

    In court records, Department of Correction Deputy Director Jeff Zmuda said releasing this information would “jeopardize” future executions.

    That’s because drug companies would face “significant harassment and pressure” to stop selling their products for use in lethal injections, he says.

    “The reason why their ability to carry out executions would be jeopardized by being transparent was because they’d be disclosing information that the public’s just not comfortable with and that’s why we have the public records act in the first place,” Eppink says.

    A spokesperson for the Idaho Department of Correction says he hasn’t seen the ruling and can’t comment on it.

    Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden recently waded in to a court case in Nevada in which a pharmaceutical company accused the state of illegally purchasing one of its drugs to carry out its first execution since 2006.

    Wasden joined with 14 other state attorneys general to support Nevada, saying drug companies shouldn’t be able to file such last-minute lawsuits, calling it “guerilla war against the death penalty.”

    Up until a few years ago, states had used a three-drug cocktail to execute inmates: one drug to sedate, one to paralyze and one to stop an inmate’s heart from beating.

    In 2012, Idaho correction officials switched its lethal injection protocol to use only a single, lethal dose of pentobarbital. The Danish company that manufactures the drug eventually stopped exporting it to states carrying out executions.

    It’s unclear what, if any, lethal injection drugs Idaho may have on hand. The state has executed only three people since 1977 – the last of which took place in 2012.

    Nine inmates – eight men and one woman – currently sit on Idaho’s death row.

    The two parties will meet to schedule a trial at the beginning of October to determine whether the state has to release these records.

    http://www.boisestatepublicradio.org...-says#stream/0

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