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Thread: Farris Genner Morris, Jr. - Tennessee Death Row

  1. #11
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    State Attorney General Seeks Execution Dates for Nine Death Row Prisoners

    By Steven Hale
    Nashville Scene

    Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery is asking the Tennessee Supreme Court to set execution dates for nine more men, including the four remaining death row prisoners from Nashville.

    The request for more execution dates came without warning. Slatery’s office filed motions asking for the dates on Sept. 20 — the same day the AG announced he would challenge Nashville Criminal Court Judge Monte Watkins’ decision to vacate the death sentence of Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman at the request of Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk. Slatery took aim at Watkins and Funk — both of whom are elected officials — in a press release announcing the legal challenge, calling the decision to drop

    Abdur’Rahman’s death sentence “unlawful” and “unprecedented.” Funk said he stands by his position, while Abdur’Rahman’s attorney Bradley MacLean called the AG’s move “unprecedented” and said the state is “bound” by Watkins’ order.

    The AG can seek execution dates for a death row prisoner once the prisoner has exhausted the three-tier appeals process. The state Supreme Court decides when the executions will take place. In February 2018, Slatery sought a slew of execution dates and asked for them to be scheduled in quick succession, citing concerns about the state’s ability to carry out lethal injections beyond June of that year. The state Supreme Court ultimately blocked the AG’s request for the rush of executions.

    Excluding Abdur’Rahman — whose execution had been scheduled for April 16, 2020 — there are two more men scheduled to be executed in the coming months: Lee Hall on Dec. 5 and Nicholas Sutton on Feb. 20.

    The men for whom the AG is seeking execution dates are below:

    Farris Morris (Madison County), who was convicted in 1997 for the murders of Erica Hurd and Charles Ragland, as well as for the rape of Angela Ragland.

    Like the five men who have been executed since August 2018, many of the men above have a history of severe mental illness.

    The Scene received this response from Assistant Federal Public Defender Kelley Henry:

    We learned of the request for mass executions late yesterday after receiving the requests in the mail. Seven of the nine are represented by my office. All of the remaining Davidson county cases are included in the request. We were surprised by the request for mass executions. Each case is unique and represents a number of fundamental constitutional problems including innocence, racism, and severe mental illness. We will oppose the appointed Attorney General’s request.

    https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/...-row-prisoners
    Last edited by Mike; 09-24-2019 at 09:25 AM.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  2. #12
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    Tennessee inmates ask court to stop execution scheduling, argue death penalty rooted in racism

    NASHVILLE - One African American defendant was forced by a judge to represent himself at trial. Another was shackled in front of an all white jury during a sentencing hearing. And a third black defendant facing the death penalty is intellectually disabled.

    Those are some of the arguments made by defence attorneys in documents filed this week with the state U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to stem the pace of executions in Tennessee, which has surged to the forefront nationally in its application of the death penalty. They also argue Tennessee's use of capital punishment is rooted in a racist past and is still plagued with inherent racism.

    Attorney General Herbert Slatery is seeking to set dates for the nine death row inmates, all men, to die. Four of the nine are African American. Attorneys for the inmates point out that the justices could keep Tennessee moving in the opposite direction of the country as a whole or could join the ranks of most states in trending away from executions.

    "While the standards of decency of the nation as a whole have evolved towards rejection of the death penalty, Tennessee has fallen out of step with the rest of the country -- particularly in the last eighteen months, during which the State has executed six of its citizens at a rate not seen since before 1960," attorneys for the inmates wrote.

    One of the inmates facing a possible execution date, Tony Carruthers, would be the first person in about a century to be put to death after being forced to represent himself at trial, supervisory assistant federal public defender Kelley Henry wrote in a filing.

    Carruthers and another man were convicted of the 1994 killing of three people in an attempt to corner the illegal drug trade in their Memphis neighbourhood.

    The trial judge refused to appoint another attorney after Carruthers, whose attorneys describe him as severely mentally ill, ran off about a half-dozen lawyers with threats or lack of co-operation, the filing said. A court has never weighed in on whether Carruthers' self-representation was constitutionally adequate, Henry wrote.

    Farris Morris, an African American man convicted of a 1994 double murder and rape, was shackled during his sentencing trial in sight of an all-white panel of jurors, according to the filing that seeks to block an execution date for him. Two jurors noted the shackles in affidavits, but a court said after his conviction that nothing in the trial record showed he was visibly shackled in front of jurors, the filing states.

    In the case of Pervis Payne, who is also African American, defence attorneys sought a court order last month to find out about evidence they now want tested for DNA: a bloody comforter, bloody sheets and a bloody pillow. Payne, who has maintained his innocence, was convicted of murder for the 1987 deaths of a woman and her 2-year-old daughter. Additionally, his attorney wrote that his execution would be illegal because he's intellectually disabled.

    Tennessee resumed executions in August 2018, and four of the six prisoners put to death since have chosen the electric chair, a method no other state has used since 2009.

    Another execution is scheduled for February, where Nicholas Todd Sutton is to be executed if Gov. Bill Lee doesn't intervene in the case.

    Slatery's office has said the motion to set execution dates "is not a prerogative" and "is required by state law," citing a state Supreme Court rule that the attorney general "shall file a motion requesting that this Court set an execution date" after the prisoner fails in at least one challenge within each of the three tiers of death penalty appeals.

    The rule doesn't specify how quickly the attorney general has to request execution dates.

    Slatery requested all nine execution dates on the same day in September he sought to reinstate a death sentence for Abu-Ali Abdur' Rahman, a black man who was resentenced to life in prison in August after raising claims that racism tainted the jury selection process. The state Supreme Court has since stayed his execution date of April 2020.

    Beyond the individual cases, the death row inmates' attorneys contend that Tennessee's application of the death penalty shows "the overt racism that led to the lynching of black citizens became ingrained in the justice system."

    They cited statistics that show African Americans make up 17% of the state's population, but about half of its death row inmates.

    There also is a geographic disparity: since 2001, only eight of Tennessee's 95 counties have imposed sustained death sentences. Almost half of the men on death row are from Shelby County, which includes Memphis and is Tennessee's largest county, but only includes less than 14% of the state population, the filing said.

    https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/tenness...cism-1.4753101
    "How do you get drunk on death row?" - Werner Herzog

    "When we get fruit, we get the juice and water. I ferment for a week! It tastes like chalk, it's nasty" - Blaine Keith Milam #999558 Texas Death Row

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