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Thread: Missouri Capital Punishment News

  1. #121
    Vickie
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    Missouri switches time frame for executions, will start around dinner time instead of midnight

    In the past, Missouri would get a certain day on the calendar to complete the task and the state would start at 12:01 a.m. on that particular day. If something was delayed with appeals or something went wrong in the procedure, the Supreme Court's execution warrant would be good for the rest of that calendar day.

    Now, the state still has a 24-hour time limit, but the clock will begin at 6 p.m. Missouri was the only remaining state to use the midnight start time, a federal court official said.

    Department of Corrections' spokesman David Owen said the department wanted the change to better accommodate witnesses.

    "Moving the execution time to 6 p.m. makes it more practical for witnesses attending an execution and for the courts reviewing the case, and falls in line with the majority of other states that carry out executions," Owen said in an email.

    http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/c...7dc38b8eb.html


    Adding to Note:

    Missouri will stick with the midnight start once more — for its execution of Walter Storey scheduled for 12:01 a.m. next Wednesday. Storey was sentenced to die for a fatal attack in 1990 on Jill Lynn Frey in her St. Charles apartment.
    Last edited by Vickie; 02-07-2015 at 12:02 AM. Reason: Walter Storey still will be at midnight

  2. #122
    ganeshn2
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    If they so wanted to know the composition, make, and potency, the state of Missouri should offer to sell the drugs to the parties, of course for 10 times its original cost. They can do whatever they want to do with the drug.

  3. #123
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Richard86's Avatar
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    That's a brilliant idea, if the defense aren't happy about the quality of the batch to be used provide them with a small amount and they can stick them through a mass spectrometer, HPLC or gas chromatogram themselves to confirm the quality if they like.

    No one needs to know who made them, that's utterly irrelevent to whether the drugs will work properly (something I agree is an important consideration). I've had arguments with people who are icked out by the fact that food grade citric acid is made by fermenting GM yeast rather than extracted it from lemons. It's still chemically speaking citric acid, how it's made doesn't put any magical specialness into it which changes how it works, chemistry doesn't work like that! Same thing applies to lethal injection drugs, you can confirm yourself their quality without needing to know who made them.

  4. #124
    Jan
    Guest
    But then the defense would say that the sample is not from the batch used in the execution.

    Btw, it's really funny how many think that citric acid is from lemons. I also knew some who didn't want to drink anything with citric acid anymore after knowing the truth.

  5. #125
    ganeshn2
    Guest
    By court order, samples (with no labels about the manufacturer) can be taken out from a batch, and be tested. By this, they cannot contest that samples are from a different batch, which will be used for execution.

  6. #126
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Attorneys struggle to keep up with Missouri’s execution pace

    Lives depend on the quality of their work.

    But for the small group of lawyers who take on the burdens of defending inmates on the cusp of execution in Missouri, the sheer volume of cases is overwhelming their ability to do that work.

    That’s the message four law professors and lawyers delivered to the Missouri Supreme Court this week as they called for execution procedure changes that would give lawyers more time for each client.

    “These amendments are necessary because the capital defense bar is in crisis because of its recent workload,” the group wrote.

    Since November 2013, Missouri has executed 13 men. A handful of lawyers who specialize in capital litigation have represented most of them.

    They also represent most of Missouri’s other defendants with a pending execution date or who soon are expected to see one set.

    The state’s fast execution pace — Missouri tied Texas for most in the country last year with 10 — has left those lawyers struggling to meet their legal obligations to multiple clients at the same time, according to the letter by members of an American Bar Association death penalty assessment team that recently studied Missouri’s execution system.

    “The legal proceedings in death penalty cases are notoriously lengthy and complex,” they wrote. “Establishing a detailed understanding of those proceedings is a time consuming task and a basic prerequisite to competent performance.”

    In addition, the cases take an intense emotional toll on attorneys who get to know the clients intimately before watching them die, the letter said.

    “No matter how professional the relationship between a death-sentenced client and his counsel, having a client executed is a uniquely taxing professional experience,” the letter stated.

    One attorney has represented five of the last nine men executed and has two other clients with an “imminent risk of execution,” the letter noted.

    Missouri’s next execution is scheduled for March 17. The attorney representing that man, Cecil Clayton, had a client who was executed in November and represents two other men likely to see execution dates set soon.

    The four members of the assessment team who sent the letter to the Supreme Court — University of Missouri law professor Paul Litton, St. Louis University law professor Stephen Thaman, retired Missouri Court of Appeals Judge Hal Lowenstein and Douglas Copeland, a partner in a St. Louis law firm — recommended three amendments to the state’s rules.

    The first would limit any one lawyer from representing a client who has an execution date set within six months of any of the lawyer’s other clients.

    Second, they also ask that a minimum notice of six months be given before an execution can be carried out.

    The third proposal would allow lawyers to prioritize caseloads to concentrate on cases with pending execution dates while being granted more time to deal with other clients’ cases.

    “These are common-sense solutions to a serious problem affecting virtually every scheduled execution,” according to the letter.

    The problems have mounted only recently in Missouri, where the lawyers pointed out that only two executions took place in the seven years from 2006 through 2012. But this has been a long-term issue in other death penalty states.

    “For decades it has been widely recognized … that unreasonable workloads among capital litigators can severely challenge the effectiveness of their representation,” said national death penalty expert Deborah Denno, a professor at the Fordham University School of Law.

    Though it will be up to the Missouri Supreme Court to adopt or reject the rule changes, the court has shown some flexibility in the past.

    Last July, it changed the rules to limit executions to no more than one per month.

    And last August, the court withdrew an execution warrant it had issued the previous month after the inmates’ attorneys said they wouldn’t have enough time to do everything required in the case while balancing work they had in other pending cases.

    They were given additional months before that man’s execution was carried out in November.

    Officials with the Missouri attorney general’s office said Tuesday that they had not seen a copy of the proposals and could not comment.

    Jennifer Herndon, a St. Louis-area lawyer who has represented several death row inmates, said the proposals are all good ideas that are badly needed.

    “People don’t understand the pressure, particularly in the last 30 to 45 days before an execution,” she said. “If you don’t work on it 24 hours a day, you’re thinking about it 24 hours a day.”

    Facing that same kind of pressure month after month makes it virtually impossible to operate at 100 percent “no matter how hard you try,” she said.

    “Each one becomes harder to get through than the one before,” Herndon said.

    http://www.kansascity.com/news/local...#storylink=cpy
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  7. #127
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Hustler publisher Larry Flynt wins right to pursue Missouri execution records

    A federal appeals court on Tuesday said Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler magazine, had a right to weigh in on two lawsuits challenging how Missouri conducts executions.

    The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis said a lower court judge applied the wrong legal standard in finding that Flynt’s “generalized interest” in the litigation did not justify his being allowed to pursue sealed court records.

    Sixteen media outlets and interest groups, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Politico and Public Citizen, supported the appeal of Flynt, who was paralyzed in a 1978 shooting.

    Eric Slusher, a spokesman for Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster, said that office was reviewing the decision.

    Flynt was seeking to intervene in two cases in which death row inmates are challenging the constitutionality of Missouri executions, including the protocol for administering drugs.

    Invoking the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, Flynt said he had a right to review various sealed records, in part to identify an anesthesiologist working for the state.

    Flynt claimed an interest as a publisher and death penalty opponent, and also because Joseph Franklin, who had confessed to shooting him in 1978, was a plaintiff in both cases.

    Missouri executed Franklin for another killing in November 2013.

    The 8th Circuit returned the case to the federal court in Jefferson City, Missouri, to decide whether to grant Flynt’s bid to unseal the records, which is not the same as intervening.

    Tony Rothert, a lawyer for Flynt and legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri, said he was pleased with the decision.

    “The public and the media have a right to know what’s happening in the courts,” Rothert said in a phone interview. “There has also been concern in Missouri about the lack of transparency concerning drugs used in executions, and the public has a right to know what’s going on.”

    http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/04/h...ution-records/
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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  8. #128
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Missouri Is Mysteriously Building A Massive Stockpile Of Execution Drugs


    Missouri now has enough drugs for 16 lethal injections. But how? The drugs often used in executions generally have a short expiration date.

    By Chris McDaniel
    Buzzfeed Reporter

    While other death penalty states have struggled to get their hands on execution drugs, the state of Missouri has quietly stockpiled a substantial amount.

    It raises the question: How is Missouri able to do this when no other state seems to have a steady source of the drugs? The state isn’t saying, at least not anymore.

    The state will also no longer say whether officials procure execution drugs from a compounding pharmacy, where pharmacists mix the drugs most often used in executions.

    “Missouri uses pentobarbital as the lethal chemical in its execution process, but does not admit nor deny the chemical now used is compounded as opposed to manufactured,” Attorney General Chris Koster’s Office wrote in an April court filing.

    The existence of the large supply itself suggests that something significant has changed with the kind of drug Missouri is using.

    Compounded drugs can only last for a short period of time. The United States Pharmacopeia strongly recommends against keeping a compounded drug like pentobarbital for longer than 45 days — and that the drug can only last that long if it’s frozen.

    Manufactured drugs, which are made by pharmaceutical companies, on the other hand, can last for months or years.

    State officials changed drug suppliers in February 2014, after their previous supplier, the Apothecary Shoppe, was sued for, among other things, selling execution drugs when it wasn’t licensed to do so in Missouri.

    Until February 2014, Missouri’s drug stockpile hovered around zero, presumably because the compounded drugs expired so quickly. Since changing drug suppliers, however, the state’s drug supply has exploded, according to records obtained by BuzzFeed News.

    http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrismcdanie...exe#.voJebOE8Q
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
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  9. #129
    Senior Member CnCP Addict Richard86's Avatar
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    I apologise in advance for the profanity in this, but, I HATE BUZZFEED!

    Edit: I will omit the video I wanted to include, because it does contain rather a lot of profanity and I don't want to breach the site rules, but does explain very well why I hate BuzzFeed.
    Last edited by Richard86; 06-04-2015 at 03:17 PM.

  10. #130
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Attorney Jennifer Herndon poses for a portrait outside the Thomas F. Eagleton U.S. Courthouse in downtown St. Louis. Herndon's legal work focuses on appeals for death row inmates.


    Missouri keeps killing Jennifer Herndon’s clients, so she invented an alternate life

    By Ken Armstrong
    The Marshall Project

    “Happiest person alive,” is how she identifies herself on Twitter. On her website she writes, “Hi, I’m Jennifer, a mom, entrepreneur, and business growth specialist.” Her Facebook cover says: “MAKE MONEY * SERVE PEOPLE * LOVE LIFE.”

    Jennifer Herndon is all over social media – on Google+, YouTube, Pinterest – promoting her online career as a business coach and Internet marketer. She’s written more than 150,000 words on her blog, which she started seven years ago after getting home from Celebration, Fla., where she had attended a three-day “Millionaire Training Camp.”

    She tells readers that she has spent so much money – “$53,000 is a conservative accounting of things!” – on get-rich-quick materials, only to discover it’s not so easy. But what she’s learned along the way, she wants to share with others. She promotes products on her website and can be hired to consult.

    She mentions on her blog that she has another job – “j-o-b” – that she would like to be rid of. But in those 150,000-plus words, she never says what the other job is.

    She refers to it simply as her “offline business.”

    OFFLINE

    Her other job is defending the lives of convicted murderers the state of Missouri would like to execute. In this job – as a solo practitioner, working from home in a St. Louis suburb – Jennifer Herndon is desperately unhappy.

    “I’m not doing anybody any good,” she says.

    “There’s no joy in it whatsoever. They execute people no matter what.”

    Her condemned clients were convicted of monstrous crimes, but at least a few presented powerful issues for appeal. Among them were a man diagnosed as schizophrenic who hallucinated clouds of flies and insisted on never speaking aloud the number “between 31 and 33”; a man so intellectually impaired that, as a child, he couldn’t understand hide-and-seek and who, at age 16, functioned like someone age 4-to-7; and a man whose claim of innocence was sufficiently compelling to convince a journalism class to dive into the case.

    In the past two years, while much of the country has retreated from the death penalty, Missouri has gone the opposite direction. It has accelerated executions – last year, tying Texas for most in the country, with 10 – to such an extent that the “capital defense bar is in crisis,” according to a letter written to the Missouri Supreme Court by four members of an American Bar Association death-penalty assessment team.

    Those four members – two law professors, a retired state appellate judge, and the chairman of the Missouri State Public Defender Commission – wrote in March that a mere “handful” of attorneys have represented most of the state’s executed inmates, despite the “notoriously lengthy and complex” nature of capital appellate work, coupled with “the emotional toll of losing client after client.”

    The team recommended that for attorneys handling capital appeals to be able to do their jobs adequately, the execution dates for clients should be staggered by at least six months.

    Herndon, starting in November 2013, had five clients executed in just 15 months.

    In all, she’s had seven clients executed since 2003.

    And she has another execution scheduled next week.

    Herndon may be the most extreme example of how Missouri’s quickened pace of executions is swamping the defense bar, but she is not alone. Last year, six attorneys in addition to Herndon had multiple clients executed.

    That list would have been longer if not for a stay granted by the U.S. Supreme Court before Mark Christeson’s scheduled execution in October. Christeson’s two attorneys, who had represented another inmate executed earlier in the year, missed a crucial filing deadline, not even meeting with their client until six weeks after it had passed. “Cases, including this one, are falling through the cracks of the system,” more than a dozen former state and federal judges wrote in a brief.

    Paul Litton, a University of Missouri law professor and one of the four signatories on the letter from the ABA’s death-penalty assessment team, says: “With the executions happening month after month after month, and with so few attorneys handling these cases, the workload is just overwhelming.”

    On Tuesday, Herndon and her co-counsel filed a request for a stay of execution for Richard Strong, scheduled to be executed June 9. The motion’s basis was their workloads, in particular Herndon’s. The motion says that when Herndon’s last client was executed in February, she put in more than 225 hours, “knowing that much more should have been done …” For the pending execution, she has 20 banker’s boxes of materials to review. Herndon “is struggling to fulfill her duties,” the motion says.

    “Mr. Strong is at least entitled to a ‘fair fight.’ Such is impossible when defense counsel come in bloody and bruised, while the government has a seemingly endless supply of fresh reinforcements …,” the motion says.

    While confronting this procession of execution warrants, Herndon has also faced the prospect of losing her law license. The Missouri Supreme Court already suspended her license for four months in early 2013, because she was delinquent on her state income taxes. Although she got her license back, the state has been threatening to suspend it again, because she is again delinquent.

    “They think I care,” Herndon says. “They always threaten to suspend my license – and I’m like, ‘OK, suspend my license. Then maybe my clients will live longer.’”

    ‘WHEN YOU'RE YOUNG’

    Herndon, who is 49, earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology and political science from what is now known as Missouri State University. There, a political science professor suggested law school.

    “I always had an interest in helping the underdog,” she says.

    “I guess when you’re young, you think you can save the world.”

    Plus, she figured, what can you really do with an undergraduate degree in psychology and political science?

    She earned a law degree from the University of Missouri and was admitted to practice in the state in 1990.

    Between 1997 and 2009, federal judges appointed Herndon, usually with co-counsel, to handle final appeals for at least 11 condemned inmates, according to court files. That work can be exceptionally demanding, with attorneys called upon to reinvestigate evidence, canvass a client’s criminal, social and family history, and probe the state’s execution protocols.

    Assigned the appeal for condemned inmate Christopher Simmons – who, at age 17, wrapped a woman in electrical wire and duct tape, then threw her from a bridge – Herndon helped win a landmark case, convincing the Missouri Supreme Court that it was cruel and unusual punishment to execute anyone for a crime committed as a juvenile. In 2005, in Roper v. Simmons, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed.

    Asked about the case, Herndon recalls less the triumph than how it eventually became the equivalent of a pro bono venture, with her putting in long hours for no additional pay.

    The first of Herndon’s clients to be executed was in 2003. Eight years passed before a second client was executed. That same year, in 2011, another of Herndon’s clients, Richard Clay, had his sentence commuted to life by Gov. Jay Nixon. The government capped its pay for the clemency work done by Herndon and a second attorney at $7,000, with the chief judge of the federal appeals court writing: “[N]o lawyer is entitled to full compensation for services for the public good.”

    Herndon says she didn’t see even a dollar of the $7,000. That money went to specialists tapped to help with the case.

    Then, in 2013, Missouri initiated a wave of executions, with death warrants sweeping up one after another of Herndon’s clients. In a Time article a law professor attributed the wave to a “perfect storm,” conservative judges wielding influence at the same time backlogged appeals were being exhausted.

    Lee Kovarsky, post-conviction director of Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit established by veteran capital attorneys, says Missouri’s determination to empty its death row as quickly as possible was bound to have an unusually great impact on its defense bar. Although Texas executed just as many inmates last year, Texas has been executing a comparatively large number of inmates for decades. (In 2000 alone: 40.) Kovarsky says that through the years, Texas has spawned more organizations such as his to share in the work of capital defense, which helps disburse the impact.

    The same year Missouri ramped up its executions, Herndon confronted mounting financial pressures that jeopardized her law license.

    In 2010 and 2012, according to court records, the state Department of Revenue had filed two tax liens against Herndon, alleging that she owed $23,098.69 for unpaid state income taxes in 2006, 2007 and 2008, with interest accruing.

    “It is what it is,” she says. “Am I going to pay my state income taxes or am I going to feed my kids?”

    In Missouri, if a tax debtor is a lawyer, the revenue department can seek to have the person’s law license suspended. Under that rule, the Missouri Supreme Court suspended Herndon’s license in February of 2013.

    Afterward, Herndon resolved the dispute and provided a certificate of tax compliance, according to state records. The Missouri Supreme Court reinstated her license in June of 2013.

    Two months later, the same court issued execution orders for two of her clients, presenting Herndon with the extraordinary challenge of fighting back-to-back executions.

    Ultimately, the execution dates settled upon were Nov. 20, 2013, for serial killer Joseph Franklin and Dec. 11, 2013, for Allen Nicklasson, who was condemned for shooting to death a Good Samaritan who had offered to help Nicklasson with his stalled car.

    Herndon says that once an execution warrant is issued, there isn’t enough time to do all that needs doing, even if you give all your time to that one case. And she can’t devote every waking hour to any one case, she says. She’s a single mother, with kids to take care of. She has other cases. And she has her other job.

    ONLINE

    Jennifer Herndon started her blog in June 2008, fresh off the “Millionaire Training Camp,” where attendees received “true insider secrets” and a “fully operational million dollar business,” according to the event’s promotional materials.

    She paid “nearly $10,000” to attend, including tuition, hotel, airfare and other costs, Herndon wrote. But it was worth it, she wrote, for reinforcing her understanding that “a successful home business is 90% mindset and 10% method.” “[I]t’s almost too good to be true. … To know that I already HAVE 90% of what it takes to be a millionaire blows me away.”

    “I’ve found the keys to success. I’m going to share them with you,” Herndon wrote in her initial blog post, thereafter directing readers to a website where they could claim a free CD.

    Herndon said in an interview that she launched her online career when she began burning out on her law career. “I just decided I didn’t want to do it anymore,” she says. She didn’t view her online work as in addition to. “It was instead of.”

    She has said the same on her blog, describing her goal – not yet realized – as a “seven figure income working from home.” She wrote in 2009: “Often while I’m working at night I find myself thinking ‘when am I going to be successful?’ Which, to me, means ‘when am I going to be able to leave my other career and devote all of my work to my online business?’”

    On her blog, Herndon describes how she makes money online. One way is being an “affiliate.” She promotes a product on her blog – for example, “Jim Rohn’s One Year Success Plan” – with an accompanying link. If readers click through and buy, Herndon gets a commission. Plus, she writes: “If you are in a two-tier affiliate program (and you should be), your buyers become your affiliates.” Herndon also has private clients whom she coaches on such matters as time management, according to her blog.

    Online she offers advice on topics ranging from personal interaction (“the secret is to simply … smile”) to the formula for success (“burning desire” plus “massive action”) to search engine optimization.

    People fall into two camps – “millionaire mentality” and “minimum mentality,” she writes. “At least 97% of the people in this country have the minimum mentality. These are all the people that caution you against those ‘work from home scams,’ or ‘pyramid schemes.’ … If you want to begin to succeed in your home based business, you’ve got to get away from these people.”

    Herndon posts dozens of inspirational messages on her social-media accounts, the sources ranging from Buddha to Maya Angelou to herself. She writes of eschewing the morning news – “details of the city’s 59th murder was not a stellar start” to the day – in favor of a motivational CD, and relates how she stays positive by singing “happy Mary Poppins-like songs” and by embracing daily affirmations (“I like my affirmations to be a little shorter so that I can mindlessly repeat them throughout the day”).

    At times, Herndon describes being disillusioned with the online world. She writes of ordering a “‘free’ CD” from an Internet marketer, which leads to a “free strategy session” on the telephone, which leads to a sales pitch for a $5,000-plus seminar (which she thought of purchasing, only to be billed for it before giving authorization).

    OFFLINE, THEN ONLINE

    Beginning in the 1970s, Joseph Paul Franklin, a white man from Alabama whose goal was to start a race war, traveled the country shooting people, murdering, among others, two black teens in Ohio, two black joggers in Utah, and an interracial couple in Wisconsin. He also admitted shooting and wounding civil rights leader Vernon Jordan and pornography magnate Larry Flynt.

    Although convicted of or linked to at least 18 killings, the only case in which Franklin got the death penalty was in Missouri, for the 1977 shooting of a man outside of a synagogue.

    Before Franklin’s scheduled execution on Nov. 20, 2013, Herndon and other members of Franklin’s defense team mounted challenges in the state and federal courts, and in a plea to the governor’s office.

    On Nov. 18, the governor denied Franklin’s clemency request. But on Nov. 19, on the eve of execution, the defense team won stays from two different federal judges, on two different issues. One judge ruled that Missouri’s use of pentobarbital threatened to cause “unnecessary pain beyond that which is required to achieve death.” A second judge issued a stay based on concerns about Franklin’s mental competence.

    Dorothy Otnow Lewis, a psychiatry professor who examined such notorious killers as Ted Bundy, had interviewed Franklin years before and concluded that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. Franklin experienced hallucinations and delusions, attributed magical powers or dangers to certain numbers and words, and nursed bizarre beliefs, insisting, for example, that he needed to be castrated or else he would burn in hell.

    Lewis told The Marshall Project that she “very rarely” makes a finding of paranoid schizophrenia, adding: “You don’t have to be a bleeding heart liberal to say, ‘You don’t execute schizophrenic people.’”

    But as midnight approached and passed, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted both stays. This precipitated a pre-dawn scramble from the defense team, which asked the 8th Circuit to reconsider (denied, at 2:45 a.m.) and the U.S. Supreme Court to grant a stay (denied, at 5:43 a.m.).

    The execution went forward at 6:07 a.m. Ten minutes later, Franklin, 63, was pronounced dead. Herndon called Franklin’s daughter in Alabama, to deliver the news.

    One day later, on Nov. 21, Herndon went on Facebook and wrote: “Super-excited to be making the long drive to Atlanta to meet some online friends in real life! Although, I REALLY wish this had not been our average speed for the last hour …”

    Below her note was a picture of a dashboard, showing the car was going 3 mph.

    Herndon was heading to another three-day event for online entrepreneurs, akin to the Millionaire Training Camp. This one was called “Hell Yeah! Star,” an event focusing on “personality brand packaging,” with sponsors that included a coach promoting “Unlimited Profits for Intuitive Women” and an abundance astrologer.

    The next day, in Facebook’s comments section, she wrote: “[W]e finally made it! The event has really been awesome so far. I am in the middle [of] rebranding and this has helped me tremendously!”

    Herndon had another client scheduled to be executed in less than three weeks. She also was about to receive more bad news that could jeopardize her law license.

    ‘I HAVEN'T BEEN COMPLIANT’

    On Dec. 4, 2013 – two weeks after Franklin’s execution, and one week before the next execution – the Department of Revenue filed a new lien against Herndon, citing unpaid state income taxes in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. Added up, she owed $24,172.54 for those four years, according to the lien.

    Herndon could have been, and still could be, suspended again. But, she says, while the state has made threats – the latest letter came from the revenue department just within the past few weeks – there has been no follow through.

    “I think they don’t do it because they know they can’t execute my clients if they do it, honestly,” she says. For a condemned inmate, having an appellate lawyer suspended could be powerful grounds for relief. That, she says, is the only logical reason not to suspend her for failure to pay. “Because I haven’t been compliant, and I’m not compliant now,” she says.

    Because of confidentiality rules governing taxes and attorney discipline, the state’s position in all this is not public record, at least not yet. (Asked about Herndon, a Department of Revenue spokeswoman said in an email that the agency is prohibited from “discussing confidential taxpayer information.”) What’s clear is that Herndon has kept practicing – a member of the bar in good standing – while the revenue department tried another means of recovering the debt, garnisheeing a bank account.

    After Nicklasson was executed in December 2013, Herndon had clients executed in March and December of 2014, and in February 2015. One, Paul Goodwin, was executed despite concerns about his mental capacity. His IQ had been scored as low as 72.

    And all the while, Herndon has continued to juggle her offline and online careers, along with her financial challenges. One day after her client was executed in March 2014, a collection agency filed a lawsuit against Herndon, alleging a delinquent credit-card debt of about $8,000. And one day after Goodwin was executed in December 2014, Herndon tweeted: “Really good stuff! ‘Twitter Marketing: How To Get Followers That Actually Matter’ via @MelonieDodaro.”

    In addition to Richard Strong, Herndon represents Roderick Nunley, another death row inmate whose appeals have just about been exhausted.

    “I feel like I’m not doing the best work I can or should be doing for my clients right now,” Herndon says.

    Asked what she plans to do after her two remaining capital cases are finished, Herndon said: “Oh, I quit.”

    The Marshall Project is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization covering America's criminal justice system.

    http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/c...c64abced3.html

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