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Thread: Michael Wayne Ryan - Nebraska

  1. #21
    Moderator Dave from Florida's Avatar
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    The Nebraska Supreme Court once again stayed an execution they scheduled earlier. Michael Ryan's execution is off now due to lethal injection issues.

  2. #22
    Administrator Michael's Avatar
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    It´s a shame....

  3. #23
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    Ryan has been on the row way too may years.Where is justice for James Thimm and Luke Stice!

  4. #24
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    Nebraska court rejects Ryan's death row appeal

    A Nebraska court is refusing to consider a death row inmate's questions about the state's new execution method of lethal injection and how the needed drugs for it were obtained.

    The Richardson County District Court rejected Michael Ryan's appeal because it said he should have filed a different kind of motion to challenge the method of execution.

    Attorney General Jon Bruning said Friday he was pleased with the ruling.

    Ryan was convicted of torturing and killing James Thimm at a southeast Nebraska farm near Rulo in 1985, and for the beating death of the 5-year-old son of a cult member.

    Ryan's attorney, Jerry Soucie, didn't immediately respond to a message Friday morning.

    Nebraska has not executed anyone since 1997, and it has yet to execute anyone by lethal injection.

    http://www.nebraska.tv/story/1706589...ath-row-appeal

  5. #25
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    High court asked to reject appeal by death-row inmate Ryan

    The Nebraska Attorney General's Office asked the state Supreme Court on Monday to reject an appeal by death-row inmate Michael Ryan, who was sentenced to die in connection with one of the state's most heinous murders.

    "Michael Ryan was found guilty and sentenced to death for brutally torturing and murdering another man more than 25 years ago," said Attorney General Jon Bruning. "There is no doubt Ryan is guilty. These meritless appeals only serve to delay justice."

    Ryan's lawyer, Jerry Soucie of the Nebraska Commission of Public Advocacy, has appealed a March decision by Richardson County District Judge Daniel Bryan Jr., who rejected his appeal. The Supreme Court then issued a stay of Ryan's scheduled March 6 execution.

    Soucie argued that Ryan was sentenced to die in the electric chair, which the state no longer uses. Nebraska switched to lethal injection after a 2008 state Supreme Court ruling that the chair was unconstitutional and cruel and unusual punishment. At the time, Nebraska was the only state with electrocution as its sole means of execution.

    Soucie asked that Ryan's death sentence be reduced to life without parole.

    Ryan was convicted in the cult-related 1985 killings of James Thimm, 26, and Luke Stice, 5, near Rulo. He was sentenced to death for Thimm's murder.

    In his order, Bryan said courts have jurisdiction in such cases only if "a prisoner under sentence asserts facts that claim a right to be released on grounds that there was a denial or infringement of state or federal constitutional rights that would render the judgment or conviction void or voidable.

    "Here, Ryan … is asking that his death sentence be vacated for constitutional infringements and that he be sentenced to life in prison without parole. The grounds he alleges occurred well after the final judgment in the criminal matter and do not deal with the judgments of the death sentence ordered by the court, but deal with the method of inflicting the death penalty."

    That issue, the judge said, already was decided by the Nebraska Supreme Court in death-row cases in 2006 and 2008.

    "Ryan's allegations regarding Nebraska's method of execution address issues wholly separate and apart from the constitutional validity of Ryan's judgment of conviction and sentence of death," said Solicitor General J. Kirk Brown in Monday's filing. "The district court accurately determined it lacked jurisdiction to reach the relative merits of Moore's motion."

    Thimm was tortured for several days by members of Ryan's cult at their Rulo compound. He was beaten, his fingers were shot off, he was sodomized with a shovel handle, his legs were skinned and several of his bones were broken. Finally, Ryan killed him by stomping on his chest.

    http://journalstar.com/news/local/cr...#ixzz1stYvW474
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  6. #26
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    Lethal drug issue may be decided in higher court

    Perhaps murderer Michael Ryan feels blessed. Attorney General Jon Bruning might feel jinxed. At the least, he’s very upset and, as is his custom, he has given voice to his discontent.

    Ryan, 63, has been on death row since 1985. The story of how the one-time leader of a religious, anti-government cult came to be convicted of two shockingly brutal torture/murders made national news.

    More than 26 years later Ryan still sits on death row, maybe believing that God is on his side. He said as much in years past:

    - “I know I haven’t done anything in his eyes wrong, because man’s laws are the laws of Satan.”

    - “I ain’t answering to them (other people). I’ll answer to Yahweh when I get there and if I’ve been wrong then I have an eternity for hell.”

    Bruning, in contrast, has a figurative death grip on a supply of one of three drugs the state would use to kill Ryan — sodium thiopental — and he wants to fight a federal court order, and a subsequent order from the federal Food and Drug Administration, to turn the stuff over to the FDA.

    And the state is also refusing to comply with a recall order for the drug, issued by the Swiss company, Naari AG. The company says Nebraska obtained the drug under false pretenses from a third party.

    In March, Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. ordered, in a case involving Arizona, California and Tennessee, that the FDA collect any sodium thiopental obtained from overseas by any state.

    Bruning told the FDA it should appeal the order, which he personally concluded was wrong and did not involve Nebraska.

    “Other than the court’s erroneous order, we are unaware of any evidence or reasons why the Department of Correctional Services should be required to return any thiopental in its possession,” Bruning told the FDA.

    What’s to come of defying the FDA and, indirectly, the federal court order?

    More courtroom maneuvering, probably. The kind that can eventually be dropped on the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court.

    http://www.kearneyhub.com/news/opini...9bb2963f4.html
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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  7. #27
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    Court to hear lethal-injection appeal

    A federal appeals court will hear arguments in March in a case that could force Nebraska to surrender a lethal-injection drug that is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain.

    The case stems from a ruling last March by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, who said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration must immediately notify state correctional departments in possession of any foreign-manufactured sodium thiopental that using such drugs is against the law and the drugs must be returned immediately to the FDA.

    The FDA says the judge overstepped his bounds in a ruling. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Washington, D.C., circuit, will hear the appeal March 25.

    Nebraska and several other states in which sodium thiopental is part of the execution protocol were forced to buy it overseas when the last U.S. manufacturer quit making it in 2010 because of death-penalty opposition from overseas customers.

    Nebraska's sodium thiopental came in two batches, most of which will expire in May. The rest will expire in December.

    Leon sided with lawyers for death row inmates in Tennessee, Arizona and California who say the foreign-made sodium thiopental is an unapproved drug.

    But FDA lawyers point to a 1985 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a case called Heckler v. Chaney that said the FDA's decision to not take enforcement action in a lethal-injection drug case was not subject to judicial review.

    That case involved a challenge by death-row inmates in Texas and Oklahoma who argued that U.S.-manufactured lethal injection drugs in the possession of prison officials had not been certified by the FDA as "safe and effective" for human executions and thus should be barred from being distributed via interstate commerce.

    The FDA argues that Leon "expressly rejected FDA’s explanations that it does not want to expend resources on an area it considers distant from its public health mission and that it has historically deferred to law enforcement."

    "As the Supreme Court recognized in Heckler, overriding an agency’s discretion to decide whether to engage in enforcement proceedings interferes with the agency’s determinations about whether particular enforcement actions are counterproductive or unduly tax agency resources in relation to other responsibilities that the agency may regard as more pressing," the brief says.

    "As in the domestic context, FDA employs a risk-based approach at the border, at times involving the exercise of enforcement discretion ... to preserve its limited resources for violations that pose the most serious threats to public health," the FDA said. "FDA may take action if drugs offered for import do not conform with various requirements, such as by being misbranded or adulterated, or by lacking required approval."

    Leon's ruling also said the FDA is prohibited from allowing foreign-made sodium thiopental into the United States.

    Lawyers for the inmates argue that the FDA's actions were arbitrary and capricious.

    "First, FDA acted contrary to its own regulations, which provide that an unlisted, unregistered, misbranded and unapproved drug -- which foreign thiopental undisputedly is -- cannot be imported," they said in court documents. "Second, FDA acted arbitrarily and capriciously because it departed from its own unbroken practice of excluding such drugs without providing a reasoned basis. FDA has stated over and again, to courts, Congress, and in policy statements, that it has no ability to authorize states and localities to import drugs failing (standards laid out in federal law)."

    The inmates' lawyers said the FDA issued a directive in January 2011 that set a general policy of automatically releasing all foreign thiopental shipments destined for prisons.

    "Not only does this policy confirm that, as set forth above, FDA is taking affirmative steps that go far beyond merely 'exercising enforcement discretion' in the fashion of a prosecutor declining to prosecute; the policy itself, which applies to all pending and future thiopental destined for correctional facilities, is judicially reviewable," they wrote.

    Nebraska's three-drug protocol was set by the state Department of Correctional Services after lawmakers switched to lethal injection from the electric chair in 2009. It calls for a dose of sodium thiopental to render the inmate unconscious, followed by pancuronium bromide to paralyze and then potassium chloride to stop the heart.

    Sodium thiopental has become increasingly difficult to obtain. The European Union recently banned the export of some barbituric acids, including sodium thiopental, further diminishing the drug's availability for use in lethal injections.

    The Swiss firm Naari AG, which made the batches of sodium thiopental held by Nebraska, has said it no longer will ship the drug if it is to be used in executions. Most of the remaining manufacturers of sodium thiopental are in India and China -- and American defense lawyers have questioned the quality of the drugs they make.

    The problems with obtaining sodium thiopental have prompted several states to switch to one drug -- the barbiturate pentobarbital -- for their executions.

    Omaha Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh, a member of the Legislature's Judiciary Committee, has said he thinks lawmakers need to step in and possibly change Nebraska's protocol.

    http://journalstar.com/news/local/cr...ment_form=true
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  8. #28
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    Defense lawyer asks for review of lethal injection drug

    A lawyer for death-row inmate Michael Ryan has asked the Nebraska Supreme Court to order a review of how state corrections officials got a lethal injection drug made by a Swiss company.

    Nebraska and several other states that use sodium thiopental as part of their execution protocol were forced to buy the drug overseas when the last U.S. manufacturer quit making it in 2010 because of death-penalty opposition from customers.

    The lawyer, Rob Kortus of the Nebraska Commission of Public Advocacy, also questioned the quality of the drug, which Nebraska bought from a middleman

    "If there can ever be a humane way of executing a human being with lethal injection in a three-drug protocol, the first drug has to work. It has to absolutely work," Kortus said in a brief filed this week with the high court.

    "That means effectively anesthetizing the person that has been condemned to die so that the first drug and the remaining two drugs can be administered without causing cruel and unusual pain," he said.

    Sodium thiopental has recently been banned for export by the European Union and is becoming increasingly difficult to get. It is made in India and China, but defense lawyers have questioned its quality.

    A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit ruled earlier this year that the sodium thiopental acquired by Nebraska and several other states for use in executions was imported illegally.

    The ruling came in an appeal of a ruling last year by U.S. District Judge Richard Leon, who said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration must order states in possession of foreign-manufactured sodium thiopental to surrender it. The appeals court said they did not have to give it up even though it was imported illegally and that Leon's order was too broad and didn't apply to the states because they were not part of the original lawsuit against the FDA.

    But, the court said, the FDA cannot allow future shipments of such unapproved drugs into the United States and rejected its argument that it had discretion to do so. The appeals court also said any imported drugs must be reviewed for safety and effectiveness and must come from FDA-registered foreign drugmakers.

    Nebraska went to lethal injection as its means of execution after the state Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the electric chair amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. The state's three-drug protocol calls for a dose of sodium thiopental to knock out the inmate, followed by pancuronium bromide to cause paralysis, then potassium chloride to stop the heart.

    Nebraska's sodium thiopental was made by the Swiss company Naari AG and came in two batches. The first expired in May; the second expires in December.

    Naari notified the U.S. Food and Drug Administration that it was recalling the supply of sodium thiopental held by Nebraska because of how it was obtained.

    Nebraska prison officials bought it from a middleman named Chris Harris, and his company, Harris Pharma LLP. Attorney Jerry Soucie, who used to represent death row inmate Ryan, argued earlier that Harris sold the drug in the form of samples meant for use in testing and was not authorized to do so. That meant Harris misappropriated the thiopental and left Nebraska in possession of stolen property. And thus, the state should not be allowed to use it.

    Nebraska prison officials refused a request by Naari to return the drug.

    Said Kortus: "The state was not forthcoming about the problems with its supply of sodium thiopental when it sought the death warrant.

    "The facts ... are alarming. They show a worrisome and troubling course of conduct on the part of the supplier of the drug. They show deception. They raise more and more questions."

    The Nebraska Attorney General's Office has until Oct. 31 to respond to the filing by Kortus.

    Richard Dieter of the Death Penalty Information Center said many death-penalty states have switched to pentobarbital, commonly used for animal euthanasia. But Danish manufacturer Lundbeck has said it would block sales to states that want to use it to execute people.

    In 2011, Oklahoma changed the language of its law to remove the reference to specific drugs. Nebraska's protocol, formulated by prison officials and vetted in public hearings, could be changed but not without some effort.

    Ryan was convicted in the cult-related 1985 killings of James Thimm, 26, and Luke Stice, 5, near Rulo and was sentenced to death for Thimm's murder.

    http://journalstar.com/news/state-an...1ec29a47d.html
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  9. #29
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Former Rulo cult member seeks release from parole

    By NICHOLAS BERGIN
    The Lincoln Journal-Star

    Miriam Thimm Kelle has forgiven Timothy Haverkamp for his part in the torture and murder of her brother, and said he deserves the opportunity to live out from under the thumb of the criminal justice system.

    “I think he has served his time and he deserves to have a life,” Kelle, who lives in Beatrice, said Wednesday.

    She is supporting a recent application Haverkamp turned into the Nebraska Board of Pardons asking to be let off his lifetime parole. The board plans to meet Dec. 11 at the Capitol to decide whether it will grant him a commutation hearing.

    In 1985, Haverkamp pleaded guilty to second-degree murder for his role in the death of 26-year-old James Thimm, a fellow member of a survivalist cult led by Michael Ryan from a farm north of Rulo.

    A jury convicted Ryan of first-degree murder in Thimm’s death and second-degree murder for the death of 5-year-old Luke Stice, the son of cult member Rick Stice. Ryan was sentenced to death for killing Thimm and life in prison for Luke’s death.

    Haverkamp got a sentence of 10 years to life and was released on parole in June 2009.

    Others convicted in the Rulo crimes were released from prison more than 14 years ago, including Jim Haverkamp, a cousin; David Andreas; and Dennis Ryan, the son of Michael Ryan.

    They called themselves followers of Yahweh and believed the world would soon dissolve into chaos and battle. They stole to get money for drugs and stockpiled automatic weapons, ammunition and food.

    Ryan, who had a following of about 20 people, preached white supremacy and antisemitism. He said he shared his body with Michael the Archangel and spoke with Yahweh.

    But in early 1985, Thimm and young Luke Stice displeased Yahweh. On Ryan’s orders, they suffered sadistic sexual and physical abuse.

    After weeks of torture, Thimm was locked in a hog shed on the night of April 27. The next day, Ryan and his followers sodomized him with the handles of a shovel and pick.

    Ryan sliced Thimm’s leg with a razor blade then used pliers to rip off the skin. They whipped him, broke his legs and one arm, and shot off the fingers of his left hand.

    Ryan, who wore cowboy boots, stomped on Thimm’s chest.

    Law enforcement raided the farm months later and unearthed the bodies of Thimm and Luke Stice. Thimm had been shot in the head.

    Timothy Haverkamp served nearly 24 years in prison before being paroled. He was a model prisoner and earned a job at the Governor’s Mansion, where he worked around the house and yard and led tours.

    At his last parole hearing, Haverkamp apologized for what happened and said he had distanced himself from hatred and violence.

    Miriam Thimm Kelle, a member of the Beatrice Mennonite Church, said Haverkamp is rehabilitated.

    “I would have him in my home. I would go get in the car with him alone,” she said. “These people were his (Thimm’s) friends. They all got mixed up together. If Jim was the one left alive and one of them were dead, I would hope that someone would treat him with dignity also.”

    Haverkamp now lives in Lincoln and works as a welder. In the past, he talked about moving outside of Nebraska, Kelle said.

    Moving away would be good for him, she said; it would help him get away from the recognition and notoriety.

    A commutation would reduce his sentence from life allowing him to get off parole but would leave in place restrictions of his conviction, like not being allowed to own a gun or vote. It’s different than a pardon, which basically forgives the crime and restores civil rights.

    The three-member Pardons Board consists of Gov. Dave Heineman, Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale and state Attorney General Jon Bruning.

    http://journalstar.com/news/local/fo...d0a204cee.html

  10. #30
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    High court asked to reject appeal by death-row inmate Ryan

    The Nebraska Attorney General's Office asked the state Supreme Court on Monday to reject an appeal by death-row inmate Michael Ryan, who was sentenced to die in connection with one of the state's most heinous murders.

    "Michael Ryan was found guilty and sentenced to death for brutally torturing and murdering another man more than 25 years ago," said Attorney General Jon Bruning. "There is no doubt Ryan is guilty. These meritless appeals only serve to delay justice."

    Ryan's lawyer, Jerry Soucie of the Nebraska Commission of Public Advocacy, has appealed a March decision by Richardson County District Judge Daniel Bryan Jr., who rejected his appeal. The Supreme Court then issued a stay of Ryan's scheduled March 6 execution.

    Soucie argued that Ryan was sentenced to die in the electric chair, which the state no longer uses. Nebraska switched to lethal injection after a 2008 state Supreme Court ruling that the chair was unconstitutional, and cruel and unusual punishment. At the time, Nebraska was the only state with electrocution as its sole means of execution.

    Soucie asked that Ryan's death sentence be reduced to life without parole.

    Ryan was convicted in the cult-related 1985 killings of James Thimm, 26, and Luke Stice, 5, near Rulo. He was sentenced to death for Thimm's murder.

    In his order, Bryan said courts have jurisdiction in such cases only if "a prisoner under sentence asserts facts that claim a right to be released on grounds that there was a denial or infringement of state or federal constitutional rights that would render the judgment or conviction void or voidable.

    "Here, Ryan ... is asking that his death sentence be vacated for constitutional infringements and that he be sentenced to life in prison without parole. The grounds he alleges occurred well after the final judgment in the criminal matter and do not deal with the judgments of the death sentence ordered by the court, but deal with the method of inflicting the death penalty."

    That issue, the judge said, was decided by the Nebraska Supreme Court in death-row cases in 2006 and 2008.

    "Ryan's allegations regarding Nebraska's method of execution address issues wholly separate and apart from the constitutional validity of Ryan's judgment of conviction and sentence of death," said Solicitor General J. Kirk Brown in Monday's filing. "The district court accurately determined it lacked jurisdiction to reach the relative merits of Moore's motion."

    Thimm was tortured for several days by members of Ryan's cult at their Rulo compound. He was beaten, his fingers were shot off, he was sodomized with a shovel handle, his legs were skinned and several of his bones were broken. Finally, Ryan killed him by stomping on his chest.

    http://beatricedailysun.com/advertis...6f5ca1ac4.html
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

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