Page 8 of 22 FirstFirst ... 67891018 ... LastLast
Results 71 to 80 of 218

Thread: Virginia Capital Punishment News

  1. #71
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Bill to make electrocution fallback method of execution stalls in Va. Senate

    RICHMOND, Va. - A Senate panel on Friday defeated a House proposal that would have made electrocution the default method of execution if one of the chemicals used for lethal injection is not available.

    The Senate Committee for Rehabilitation and Social Services did not vote on the measure, instead carrying it over to the 2015 session.

    The move comes one day after the Virginia Department of Corrections announced that it has added a new drug to the list of chemicals for use in lethal injections.

    The new drug - the sedative midazolam — is one of the chemicals recently used in an Ohio execution that prompted a lawsuit. The department has had this drug in stock since last year, according to pharmacy records obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The chemical will serve as an alternative first drug in Virginia's three-drug protocol.

    The department announced earlier this month that its supply of previously approved sedatives had either expired or was no longer available due to a shortage of chemicals used to sedate the inmate before execution.

    Del. Jackson H. Miller, R-Manassas, had introduced House Bill 1052 to ensure executions could still be carried out by electrocution if the drugs are not available.

    Miller acknowledged Friday that the Department of Corrections had added a new drug to its protocol, but said that it could face the same problem when the state's supply of midazolam expires in 2015.

    "It'll be a matter of time that the very well funded and organized groups that are fighting the use of death penalty will get the manufacturer of this new approved drug to say they are no longer going to sell it to the Department of Corrections," Miller said.

    "If anything is like the past, that manufacturer will buckle to protest."

    Del. Scott A. Surovell, D-Fairfax, said that he is glad to see that Virginia will not be the only state that mandates the electric chair. But he said he remains "dumbfounded as to why the department requested this legislation" without disclosing that it had secured alternate lethal injection drugs that were being evaluated for implementation.

    "It appears the Department of Corrections was attempting to mandate electrocutions without giving the legislature full information about a very serious issue," Surovell said Friday. "While the department has a duty to implement the law, it is not their job to advocate for or against a specific method of executing human beings," he said.

    Surovell had sponsored legislation that would have done away with electrocution as a means of execution in Virginia. A House subcommittee defeated the measure earlier this month.

    But Lisa M. Kinney, spokeswoman for the DOC, said in an email Friday that "the Department did not take a position on the bill."

    Kinney also said that while the newly approved drug was used recently in the Ohio execution of convicted murderer Dennis McGuire — which lasted 24 minutes in an experimental two-drug procedure — Virginia will not stray from its three-drug protocol.

    "Virginia's three-drug protocol is akin to Florida's, where the protocol is midazolam (a sedative), vecuronium bromide (a muscle relaxer), and potassium chloride (a drug that induces a heart attack.) Florida has used this three-drug protocol four times, starting with a lethal injection on Oct. 15," Kinney said.

    Of the drugs the department has in stock, the midazolam expires at the end of May, 2015, the rocuronium at the end of March, 2015; and the potassium chloride expires at the end of June, 2015.

    There are no executions currently scheduled in Virginia, Kinney said.

    http://www.tricities.com/news/local/...a4bcf6878.html

  2. #72
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Virginia AG defends use of solitary on death row

    By Matthew Barakat
    The Associated Press

    McLEAN -- A federal judge's order banning Virginia from automatically placing death-row inmates in solitary confinement "would do away with death row as it is currently operated" in Virginia and elsewhere, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring's office argued in court papers.

    Herring's office filed papers Monday with the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, seeking to overturn the decision of a federal judge who ruled that automatically banishing death-row inmates to solitary confinement violates their constitutional rights.

    U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria ruled last year that the practice of solitary confinement is so onerous that the Department of Corrections must justify its use for each inmate on death row. Failing to do so violates their due process rights, she said in her ruling.

    As it stands now, the state's eight death-row inmates are automatically placed in solitary.

    Herring's office says in its appeal that the judiciary should not second-guess prison wardens on issues of safety.

    "The District Court's ruling is unprecedented," the AG's office wrote in its brief. "It would do away with death row as it is currently operated in Virginia and numerous other States. ... The decision is monumentally wrong and intrudes into the core professional judgment of State corrections officials."

    The use of solitary confinement has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years. In Colorado, the state's Corrections Department director, Rick Raemisch, spent a day in solitary confinement himself and vowed to minimize the practice after saying the experiment left him "feeling twitchy and paranoid."

    Last year, the American Civil Liberties Union reported that the overwhelming majority of states with the death penalty house death-row inmates in solitary confinement, and said that the problem is exacerbated as the pace of executions slows and more inmates are held in solitary indefinitely.

    "Solitary confinement can have very deleterious effects on inmates. No prisoner should be subjected to those conditions without any penological reason," said Rebecca Glenberg, executive director of the ACLU's Virginia chapter."

    In the Virginia case, Brinkema took up the issue after inmate Alfredo Prieto — who was sent to death row in 2008 for the 1988 murder of two George Washington University students — sued over the conditions of his confinement. Brinkema tossed out Prieto's self-filed complaint that solitary confinement amounted to cruel and unusual punishment, but she appointed lawyers to help him with his argument that solitary confinement as administered by Virginia infringes his constitutional due process rights.

    Jon Sheldon, a lawyer who has represented several capital murder defendants in Virginia, said Brinkema's ruling is significant.

    "Finally a judge has said enough is enough, and we're not going to defer to the executive branch in its 'No amount of punishment is enough' approach," Sheldon said.

    In January, Brinkema denied the state's request to temporarily delay her ruling while the state appeals. But corrections officials have done nothing of significance to implement the changes demanded by Brinkema, Sheldon said.

    The only change that has actually occurred, Sheldon said, is that Prieto is now allowed an hour of exercise once a day in the gym rather than the small pen that inmates refer to as the "dog cage." Prieto is still kept in solitary, even during his exercise, and no other inmates have seen any changes, Sheldon said.

    The Department of Corrections said in January that it was "reviewing its options" in light of Brinkema's order, but declined to comment further.

    Sheldon said the effects of solitary confinement are hard to comprehend if you haven't experienced it. The lack of human contact takes its toll in unexpected ways.

    "When you hear a noise, you don't know whether the noise is something in your head or something that is actually happening," Sheldon said.

    One of Sheldon's clients, William Burns, is Virginia's longest-serving death-row inmate, having been there since 2000. Sheldon has said in court papers that the prolonged solitary confinement has exacerbated his client's mental illness. A judge has barred Burns' execution from going forward, citing his competence to understand the legal proceedings.

    http://hamptonroads.com/2014/03/va-a...tary-death-row

  3. #73
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    In Va., Supreme Court decision on intellectual disabilities could aid two on death row

    At least two inmates on Virginia’s death row might have an easier time proving they are intellectually disabled — and thus ineligible for capital punishment — because of Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision that struck down rules for defining such people with a discrete IQ score, according to experts and lawyers involved in the cases.

    While the legal road ahead is far from clear, Alfredo Prieto — who was convicted of killing a man and woman near Reston in 1988 — and William Burns — who was convicted of raping and killing his mother-in-law in Shenandoah County, Va., in 1998 — will likely use the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hall v. Florida as they seek to get off death row, the lawyers on their cases said. Both have challenged their death sentences on intellectual disability grounds in the past, and the Supreme Court’s ruling seems to give them another chance, the lawyers said.

    “I believe that at least it opens the door for a fresh look at whether or not he can be given the death penalty,” said Cary Bowen, Prieto’s attorney. “And that’s a big deal.”

    The Supreme Court ruled 5 to 4 that states could no longer draw a bright line on IQ-test results to define those with intellectual abilities when it comes to the death penalty. Virginia was among a small group of states that did just that, deciding an inmate who scored above 70 on the test did not meet the first step of proving that he or she was intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for capital punishment.

    In Prieto’s case, that IQ score requirement came into play in an earlier proceeding, said Jonathan Shapiro, a visiting law professor at Washington and Lee University and an attorney at the Greenspun Shapiro firm who represented Prieto in the past.

    “Where we presented an intellectual disabilities defense, the state’s argument was, no, that it was a hard-and-fast 70,” he said. “That, obviously, now is not valid.”

    Burns, too, is pursuing an intellectual disability claim, though his case is somewhat unusual in that he was declared incompetent for trial — which is different from being intellectually disabled — after he was convicted and sentenced, said Jon Sheldon, his attorney. Sheldon said were Burns’s competency to be restored, he would face testing for an intellectual disability and more hearings, and the Supreme Court’s decision would likely come into play.

    Sheldon and other defense lawyers specializing in death penalty cases said the ruling brings Virginia in line with most other states across the country. The broad impact, though, might be somewhat muted, as relatively few inmates sit on death row, and only a subset of those would likely be able to raise a legitimate intellectual disabilities claim, experts said.

    John Blume, a law professor at Cornell University and an expert in capital punishment cases, said there were likely less than 20 defendants across the country who “lost because the court said they couldn’t meet the first prong of intellectual disability.”

    “It’s not going to open the floodgates to litigation,” he said of the Supreme Court’s decision.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/...637_story.html
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  4. #74
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Virginia keeping drug used in botched executions

    One of the drugs used in three recent botched executions will remain part of Virginia's lethal injection protocol.

    Virginia Department of Corrections spokesman Larry Traylor said Friday that officials aren't considering eliminating midazolam as one of three drugs that can be used as the first dose in Virginia's three-drug cocktail. Midazolam was one of the drugs used in bungled executions in Ohio, Oklahoma and Arizona.

    Traylor says Virginia's three-drug protocol is not comparable to the two-drug protocol used in Arizona on Wednesday, when an inmate gasped for breath for more than 90 minutes before dying.

    Virginia added midazolam to the protocol in February and has not yet used it in an execution. Eight men are on Virginia's death row. No execution dates are scheduled.

    http://www.nbc12.com/story/26113067/...hed-executions
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  5. #75
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Court in Va. examines death row isolation policy

    Virginia's practice of automatically holding death row inmates in solitary confinement will be reviewed by a federal appeals court in a case that experts say could have repercussions beyond the state's borders.

    U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria ruled last year that around-the-clock isolation of condemned inmates is so onerous that the Virginia Department of Corrections must assess its necessity on a case-by-case basis. Failure to do so, she said, violates the inmates' due process rights.

    The state appealed, arguing that the courts should defer to the judgment of prison officials on safety issues. A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will hear arguments Tuesday.

    The lawsuit was filed by Alfredo Prieto, who was on California's death row for raping and murdering a 15-year-old girl when a DNA sample connected him to the 1988 slayings of George Washington University students Rachel Raver and Warren Fulton III in Reston. He also was sentenced to death in Virginia, where he has spent most of the last six years alone in a 71-square-foot cell at the Sussex I State Prison.

    Some capital punishment experts say a victory by Prieto could prompt similar lawsuits by death row inmates elsewhere.

    "It gives them a road map," said northern Virginia defense attorney Jonathan Sheldon, who noted that the due process claim succeeded where allegations of cruel and unusual punishment have routinely failed. "It's not that common to challenge conditions of confinement on due process grounds."

    Even the state says in court papers that Brinkema's ruling "would do away with death row as it is currently operated in Virginia and numerous other states."

    Andrea Lyon, a death penalty lawyer and dean of the Valparaiso University Law School in Indiana, agreed that the case could have a ripple effect nationally but said prisons would not become more dangerous as a result.

    "This is not stepping on the right of prisons to make their own determination of whether or not someone needs this level of confinement," she said. "Just don't do it if there's no reason."

    Lyon, who has represented 138 murder defendants, co-authored a 2005 report on Missouri's policy of "mainstreaming" death row inmates into the general prison population. She said a study of 11 years of data from that state's prison system disproves the "mythology" that death row inmates are more dangerous than other prisoners.

    But where Lyon sees mythology, Virginia prison officials see sound judgment rooted in common sense and years of experience dealing with death row inmates.

    "They're segregated because we see those individuals as potentially the most desperate of all offenders," state prisons chief Harold C. Clarke said in a deposition in the Prieto lawsuit. "Again, they have been sentenced to die. They have nothing to lose."

    He pointed to the 1984 escape by six death row inmates who had been allowed to congregate at the since-closed maximum security prison in Mecklenburg, saying the jailbreak "could have been catastrophic" had the convicted killers not been quickly apprehended. Virginia was not automatically isolating death row inmates at the time.

    Prieto is not arguing that solitary confinement should be abolished — just that the decision should be based on the same risk factors that are used to determine the security classification for the approximately 39,000 prisoners who are not facing execution. His lawyers say Prieto "likely would be assigned to less harsh conditions" if death row inmates were assessed in the same manner as other prisoners.

    Under the current policy, death row inmates are allowed to leave their tiny cell only three times a week for 10-minute showers and five times a week for an hour of solitary exercise in a separate and slightly larger cell, devoid of workout equipment, that prisoners call "the dog cage." They eat every meal alone, are not eligible for work or education programs or congregational religious services, and are allowed strictly limited visitation. The inmates are allowed to purchase a small television and CD player for their cell.

    Sheldon, who represents three of Prieto's fellow death row inmates, said prison officials have made some modest adjustments to Prieto's visitation and exercise privileges in response to Brinkema's ruling.

    Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lisa Kinney said prison officials have "taken steps in cooperation with the plaintiff's counsel to address the judge's order, pending appeal," but she declined to provide specifics. Prieto's lawyers declined to comment.

    http://www.timesdispatch.com/news/na...15422897c.html
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  6. #76
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Five Virginia death row inmates challenge solitary confinement

    By Matt Zapotosky
    The Washington Post

    Five of Virginia’s death row inmates alleged in a lawsuit Thursday that their nearly constant solitary confinement is unconstitutional and they should be give more freedom to exercise in the gym and see their immediate family members without a glass partition.

    The lawsuit filed in federal district court in the Eastern District of Virginia asks that the five inmates be given the same privileges as inmate Alfredo Prieto, whose challenge to his own solitary confinement led a federal judge last year to rule that corrections officials could not impose such extreme isolation unilaterally and automatically. Prison officials have appealed that decision.

    At stake in the lawsuit — as it seemed to be in Prieto’s case — is just how solitary life should be for Virginia’s death row inmates, and exactly what prison officials have to do in each case to justify imposing isolation. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, the state has eight inmates on death row, including Prieto and those involved in the more recent lawsuit.

    The suit — filed on behalf of Thomas Porter, Anthony Juniper, Ivan Teleguz, Mark Lawlor and Ricky Gray — alleges that forcing death row inmates to spend nearly every hour of every day in small cells with “almost no contact with other human beings” is a form of cruel and unusual punishment.

    All of those in the suit have been convicted of heinous crimes, including murders of a police officer and children.

    The lawsuit says the inmates asked for the same privileges as those given to Prieto — who was allowed to exercise in the gym and see his immediate family without a glass partition after his legal challenge — but were denied. Prieto was convicted of murder in California and of killing a man and woman near Reston in 1988.

    “It’s outrageous for the state to provide legally mandated relief for one of a bunch of similarly situated persons, particularly when what’s at issue is having to live in such horrific conditions,” said Victor M. Glasberg, one of the lawyers who filed the suit.

    Although the lawsuit claims prison officials have relaxed the conditions under which Prieto was confined, Virginia officials have fought his case all the way to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, arguing that restrictive, solitary confinement conditions for death row inmates are necessary to keep the prison safe from people with little to lose.

    U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema had rejected those arguments and ordered prison officials to either determine death row inmates’ confinement conditions on a case-by-case basis or to change all of their confinement conditions,“if only slightly,” so that they are not so restrictive.

    The appeals court has not yet ruled on the case, and the ruling certainly could undercut the more recent lawsuit.

    The five inmates — who have been on death row from three to nine years — do not suggest specific ways in which they should be given more liberties, except to say that they want to be treated like Prieto. They complain, though, that their cells are not adjacent to any others, and that they are only allowed to see family members for non-contact visits in a room with a glass partition. They also complain that the recreation room they are allowed to use for one hour a day, five days a week is a small outdoor cell without exercise equipment.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/...ab6_story.html

  7. #77
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Bill proposes secrecy on Virginia executions

    The state's prisons and one of the most powerful politicians in the state Senate are arguing for a bill that critics say could keep any information about executions secret.

    The bill also says information about the drugs and equipment used in executions and the firms that supply the drugs could be kept out of any lawsuits.

    The measure was meant to protect the firms that mix up the so-called "cocktails" of drugs Virginia uses to execute people, said state Sen. Richard Saslaw, D-Springfield, the Senate minority leader.

    "When we use the electric chair, we don't give the name of the guy who pulled the switch," he told the Senate subcommittee on health professions, adding that his measure just extends that to the companies that put together the three drugs used in executions.

    Dean Ricks, chief of professional services for the Department of Corrections, said the bill was needed to ensure the state prison system can get the drugs it needs for executions.

    Current state law says firms that compound drugs must do so for therapeutic purposes.

    "We don't qualify," Ricks said.

    He said Virginia needs to keep the names of the firms that provide execution drugs confidential for the safety of those firms.

    But the wording Saslaw proposed is so broad that it covers everything to do with executions, said Craig Merritt, a Richmond lawyer whose practice focuses on Freedom of Information Act and First Amendment issues. Merritt spoke on behalf of the Virginia Press Association.

    The bill, he noted, says "all information relating to the execution process" as well as information about the equipment used, would be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act's requirements.

    On top of that, it would mark the 1st time in Virginia that information about what the government spends taxpayer dollars on, how much it spent, how it acted to ensure the state got a good deal and whether it got what it paid for, would be secret, Merritt said.

    Corinna Lain, a University of Richmond law professor, said the bill raised serious constitutional issues.

    In 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a case from Kentucky that putting people sentenced to death at risk of excessive pain violates the Bill of Rights' prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. The Kentucky case challenged that state's use of lethal injections.

    Lain said the secrecy that Saslaw and the corrections department propose would make it impossible for anyone to know whether they were at such a risk and be able to challenge the process in court.

    Ricks said the state makes public the drugs used in its lethal injections, but Lain said other significant information, such as the potency or possible contamination of the drugs, would remain hidden.

    "I think it is the essence of bad government to enshrine in secrecy the state at its most powerful moment, when it exercises its sovereign right to take someone's life," Lain said.

    Recent botched executions in Oklahoma and Arizona have focused attention on the drugs used in executions, especially since some states have found they are having a hard time getting the drugs they prefer. The firms that sell them are often based overseas, and many refuse to sell the drugs for use in executions.

    The U.S. Supreme Court has halted the scheduled executions of 3 Oklahoma prisoners, after agreeing this month to review a challenge to that state's lethal injection procedures.

    The American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia noted that for more than 10 years the corrections department has released information about the drugs used and the procedures followed without any problems.

    There is no basis for saying the public can't handle the information, the ACLU said.

    In a briefing paper, the ACLU said the bill could clear the way for experimenting with combinations of lethal drugs, adding that such experimentation caused the botched executions in Oklahoma and Arizona.

    Saslaw dismissed criticism of his bill as simply objections from death penalty opponents.

    Those on death row, he added "have had a hell of lot more rights protected than the people they killed."

    (source: The Daily Press)
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  8. #78
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Va. Senate panel advances bill to ensure supply of lethal-injection drug

    A Senate panel on Thursday advanced a bill that would allow the state to hire pharmacies to prepare lethal-injection drugs that some drugmakers won't sell for executions.

    But the proposal came under fire at an afternoon hearing from a law professor and advocates for the Virginia Press Association, who objected to provisions meant to shield the identity of the pharmacies. Critics said that hiding that information would make it harder to ensure that inmates were not subjected to faulty drugs and would prevent news organizations and others from scrutinizing death penalty practices and state purchasing.

    In other states, such secrecy provisions have been intended to protect drug manufacturers from the political pressure that has prompted some of them to halt sales in the United States.

    The administration of Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) is seeking the measure. McAuliffe's secretary of public safety, Brian Moran, said the secrecy provision was included in the proposal for "security" reasons.

    The bill would allow the state to hire pharmacies to make the drugs. Currently, pharmacies can mix custom drugs only with a prescription for a specific patient for a therapeutic use.

    The Senate Education and Health subcommittee that heard the bill voted to amend it to require that the state disclose what drug or drug combination is used in any execution. But it left intact the secrecy provision, which extends to the terms of the pharmacies' contracts with the state.

    "There ain't a state in America that gives you the name of the guy who sticks the needle in any more than you got the names of the folks who pulled the switch when we had the electric chair," said Sen. Richard L. Saslaw (D-Fairfax), the bill's sponsor.

    Saslaw said that the measure would help the state carry out executions in the most humane way possible.

    "Would you like us to go back to the electric chair?" he asked when Corinna Barrett Lain, a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, spoke against the bill.

    Lain, a former prosecutor who described herself as "agnostic" on the death penalty, focused on the bill's "secrecy provisions."

    "I think it's extremely bad government to shroud in secrecy the state at its most powerful moment, which is exercising its sovereign right to take the life of one of its citizens," she said.

    After amending the bill, the subcommittee agreed to send it to the full Education and Health Committee, with the recommendation that it then move to the Courts of Justice Committee.

    Under Virginia law, death row inmates have a choice between lethal injection and electrocution. If they don't choose, the default method is lethal injection. An effort to make electrocution the default method failed during last year's General Assembly session.

    Virginia has a supply of the drugs needed for its lethal-injection cocktail, but the drugs will eventually expire or be used up, and there is no clear option for obtaining more, Moran said in an interview.

    "We have all 3 right now. We could perform an execution by lethal injection right now," Moran said. "But the drugs do expire and are difficult to obtain."

    Moran said the Department of Corrections has requested the bill in order "to implement the current law of Virginia, which is providing death row inmates a choice of lethal injection."

    Del. Scott A. Surovell (D-Fairfax) said he was concerned about the bill.

    "From my point of view, whenever the government is putting a human being to death, we ought to have the absolute maximum amount of sunshine and make sure it's done humanely, properly and with as much dignity as possible for such a thing," he said.

    After the electrocution debate in the legislature last year, Surovell submitted a Freedom of Information request asking the Department of Corrections for records related to drugs, execution protocols and other issues. He said the department denied most of his request, but a Fairfax County judge ordered the documents released. The department appealed. The state Supreme Court will consider next week whether to accept the appeal.

    All 32 states that impose the death penalty primarily rely on lethal injection. States apply either single or dual-drug protocols that typically involve a fatal dose of an anesthetic or sedative, or a 3-drug cocktails that add a paralyzing agent and then a caustic heart-stopping agent, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

    Controversy over the death penalty has created severe drug shortages in recent years, setting off a scramble by states to adapt workable new execution protocols and effective drug combinations.

    In the most urgent example, European manufacturers opposed to capital punishment no longer sell barbiturates to prisons in the United States. Critics say a substitute sedative adopted by several states, midazolam, may be less effective at inducing coma-like unconsciousness.

    At least 3 of the 35 people executed in the United States last year endured prolonged and apparently painful deaths. Last February, a convicted murderer in Oklahoma, Clayton Lockett, appeared to writhe and struggle before succumbing after 43 minutes, while in July, the bungled execution of Arizona double-murderer Joseph Rudolph Wood continued for 90 minutes.

    In response, Ohio, Arizona and Kentucky have altered execution plans to shift away from midazolam, although it remains proposed for use by Alabama and Virginia.

    (source: Washington Post)
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  9. #79
    Senior Member CnCP Addict johncocacola's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Posts
    643
    This bill is good timing since Virginia has a quite a few inmates who have completed their Federal Appeals assuming the Fourth Circuit doesn't stick to its increasingly liberal pattern.

  10. #80
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875
    Panel won’t restrict death penalty

    To the dismay of Catholic advocacy groups, a Senate committee has killed a bill to restrict capital punishment in Virginia.

    The Senate Courts of Justice Committee voted 10-3 last Wednesday to “pass by indefinitely” Senate Bill 1296, sponsored by Sen. Donald McEachin, D-Richmond. The bill would have allowed the death sentence only when the conviction was supported by DNA or other biological evidence or when a video “conclusively connects the defendant to the offense” – for example, with a “voluntary interrogation and confession.”

    The next day, members of the Virginia Catholic Charter, representing church members from throughout the state, gathered in Richmond for Catholic Advocacy Day, an annual summit addressing key issues before the General Assembly.

    Measures to reform Virginia’s death penalty have come before the assembly over the past several years, but none have made it out of committee. SB 1296 was aimed at reducing the risk of executing innocent people.

    Since 1973, 150 people have been exonerated from death row nationwide, sometimes because crucial evidence had been withheld. Virginia has exonerated one in that time and approved clemency for another eight inmates.

    The state’s procedure for issuing a death sentence has come under scrutiny from advocacy groups such as Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. The organization says capital punishment is unfair because of racial bias, problems with evidence and other issues.

    Michael Stone, executive director of the group, saw McEachin’s bill “as a symbolic measure that we hope will open up a dialog among legislators.”

    “There was no real hope of getting the bill through this session because of the political makeup of the assembly, but the fact that it was introduced to the committee by McEachin is still a good sign for us,” Stone said.

    “SB 1296 was an attempt to move Virginia to where Maryland was before it abolished the death penalty.”

    Virginia was the first state in America to execute an offender. Capt. George Kendall was put to death in the Jamestown colony in 1608 after being found guilty of spying for Spain.

    Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, Virginia has carried out 110 executions, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The state has not executed anyone since 2013.

    With a firmly pro-life stance, the Catholic church of Virginia is morally opposed to the death penalty and advocates for alternative measures, such as life in prison without the possibility of parole for those found guilty of heinous crimes.

    The Virginia Catholic Conference, the public policy group that organizes Catholic Advocacy Day every year at the capital, shares views on social justice that resonate with many concerned citizens outside the realm of religion.

    The conference’s priorities include preventing wrongful convictions, restoring voting rights to non-violent felons, expanding Medicaid (the health insurance program for low-income families), passing the Virginia DREAM act (which would allow certain illegal immigrants to pay in-state tuition to attend college in Virginia) and closing the “gun-show loophole,” which exempts private firearms sales from criminal background checks.

    http://www.henricocitizen.com/news/a...5#.VNO2nu7ptHA
    "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.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

Page 8 of 22 FirstFirst ... 67891018 ... LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •