Page 17 of 19 FirstFirst ... 71516171819 LastLast
Results 161 to 170 of 187

Thread: Terrance Williams - Pennsylvania

  1. #161
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Location
    Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Posts
    20,875
    Here is Gov. Wolf's memo on the moratorium.

    http://documents.buzzfeed.com/021315...eclaration.pdf
    "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

  2. #162
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Fact's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    486
    Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams filed suit with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court challenging the legality of both the reprieve of Terrance Williams and the moratorium in general.

    http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/201...ty-moratorium/

  3. #163
    Senior Member CnCP Addict johncocacola's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2013
    Posts
    643
    Isn't there something under PA law where the gov can't grant indefinite reprieves and is required to sign a death warrant?

  4. #164
    Moderator MRBAM's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2011
    Location
    Capital Region NY
    Posts
    865
    Check the PA Capital Punishment News thread.

  5. #165
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Posts
    33,217
    Pa. high court upholds stay of execution

    A man on death row won't be executed Wednesday, after the state's highest court denied the Philadelphia district attorney's petition to overturn the Gov. Wolf's temporary reprieve.

    Terry Williams, 48, was sentenced to die in 1984 for the killing of Amos Norwood, a 56-year-old Germantown church volunteer.

    In February Gov. Wolf issued a temporary reprieve on all executions, saying he wanted to see the results of a long-delayed report on the state's death penalty before any executions went forward. In previous comments Wolf called the state's death penalty by lethal injection "ineffective, unjust, and expensive."

    District Attorney Seth Williams argued Wolf was countermanding a jury's will and the state's laws with the order in his unsuccessful challenge to the court. The Supreme Court issued a decision Tuesday afternoon.

    "The Supreme Court will give us a briefing schedule and we'll continue to fight on behalf of our client," said Shawn Nolan, chief of the Federal Defender's death penalty unit in Philadelphia.

    Williams's attorneys argue that prosecutors withheld evidence that Norwood sexually abused teenage boys, including Williams, a former football star from Germantown.

    There are 186 people on death row in Pennsylvania. The last execution occurred in 1999 with the death of torture-killer Gary M. Heidnik.

    http://www.philly.com/philly/news/20...H8I5lRfoKsI.99
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  6. #166
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Fact's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    486
    That article totally misses the point. Nobody expected the execution to happen after the reprieve was issued, but it wasn't a sure thing that the Supreme Court would even hear the case. I personally thought they were going to deny the petition due to lack of jurisdiction and punt it over to the Commonwealth Court.

    On the docket sheet, it says that one of the justices would have granted the DA's petition for expedited relief, so that probably means that there is already one vote against the governor.

    Important Supreme Court election this November.

    https://ujsportal.pacourts.us/Docket...ber=14+EM+2015

  7. #167
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    State D.A.s decry Tom Wolf's moratorium on executions

    By Larry Miller
    The Philadelphia Tribune

    The Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association said in a brief before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that Gov. Tom Wolf’s death penalty moratorium could affect plea bargains and how judges and juries view executions.

    They also argued this month that it violates elements of the state constitution. They addressed the case of Terrance Williams, a death row inmate convicted of murdering two men. In the case, the prosecutor’s association called Wolf’s moratorium an obvious attempt to evade long-standing constitutional limitations on his power. They said the governor’s moratorium is a failure of his constitutional duties to uphold the laws of the commonwealth.

    Wolf granted a temporary reprieve for Terrance Williams in February. The governor said he wanted to wait for the findings of an advisory commission on capital punishment. The report will be issued by a bi-partisan committee and examines the commonwealth’s use of capital punishment. The declaration of a moratorium on the death penalty in Pennsylvania goes back to 2011 when Resolution 6, a legislative proposal by state Sen. Stewart Greenleaf, was adopted.

    “The governor’s attempt to use his ‘reprieve’ power to implement a political and personal policy of suspending the death penalty in Pennsylvania plainly violates the Constitution,” the brief stated. “A reprieve is intended to be limited and temporary and is not intended as a tool to affect an across-the-board suspension of a statutorily created penalty or sentencing scheme.”

    By affixing the label “reprieve” to his decision to suspend the death penalty, the governor has attempted to evade the clear constitutional restrictions on his power and circumnavigate the legislature, the D.A.’s group said. Historically, Pennsylvania governors once had unfettered power unilaterally to grant reprieves, commutations and pardons in death penalty cases. However, through constitutional conventions, many have sought to curb what they viewed as executive abuse by severely limiting the governor’s clemency power, especially in death penalty cases.

    “Surely, our fundamental constitutional judgments should not be invalidated by the mere stroke of the governor’s pen,” according to the brief. “That the people of the Commonwealth made this constitutional judgment to take away from the governor the power unilaterally to upset the death penalty is particularly relevant here. And what is more, the process by which the people have expressed that judgment lends even greater weight to the argument.”

    According to Greenleaf, the American Bar Association identified several areas in which Pennsylvania’s death penalty system faltered in guaranteeing each capital defendant fairness and accuracy in all proceedings. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court Committee on Racial and Gender Bias in the Justice System also determined racial, ethnic and gender biases exist, and those biases significantly affect the way parties, witnesses, litigants, lawyers, court employees and potential jurors are treated. Post-conviction DNA testing showed there are wrongful convictions, even in capital cases. A bi-partisan task force was formed to conduct a comprehensive study and report those findings to the governor.

    In his declaration of a moratorium, Wolf said it was not an expression of sympathy for those on death row and who have been convicted of heinous crimes. His decision, he said was based on a flawed system that was proven to be an endless cycle of court proceedings as well as ineffective, unjust and expensive. The moratorium would remain in effect until the task force has produced its recommendations and all concerns are addressed, Wolf said.

    Following that declaration, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams filed a petition to the state Supreme Court, again stating the governor had no constitutional grounds for the moratorium or granting the temporary reprieve to Terrance Williams. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is reviewing Seth Williams’ arguments.

    “The defendant robbed and beat a man to death with a tire iron on June 11, 1984. As this was his second murder, the jury sentenced him to die in 1986,” Seth Williams said in his petition. “Since then, this case has been subject to nearly three decades of searching direct and collateral review and the sentence has been repeatedly affirmed by this court and federal courts.”

    Other district attorneys across the state have also said Wolf exceeded his constitutional authority and he listened more to anti-death penalty advocates more than to the families of the victims murdered by those on death row.

    “No one struggles more than the people who loved the 298 men, women and children who lost their lives at the hands of the convicted murderers on Pennsylvania’s death row,” said Union County District Attorney Pete Johnson, who is also the president of the state D.A.’s group. “These families should have been heard before Wolf suspended Pennsylvania’s death penalty. They need to be heard now.”

    http://www.phillytrib.com/news/state...82cc3d4cb.html

  8. #168
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Fact's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    486
    The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania will hear oral arguments in Commonwealth v. Terrance Williams on September 10, 2015 in Philadelphia City Hall.

    http://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinio...gumentList.pdf

  9. #169
    Senior Member Frequent Poster Fact's Avatar
    Join Date
    Mar 2012
    Posts
    486
    Terrance Williams' petition for certiorari from the denial of his serial PCRA petition was distributed for the Supreme Court's September 28, 2015 conference.

    http://www.supremecourt.gov/search.a...es/15-5040.htm

  10. #170
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2010
    Location
    Germany
    Posts
    13,014
    Pa. high court hears arguments over death penalty

    Gov. Wolf calls his moratorium on Pennsylvania executions appropriate while he awaits a task force report about what he says is "a flawed system that has been proven to be . . . ineffective, unjust, and expensive."

    District Attorney Seth Williams, county prosecutors, and legislative leaders counter that Wolf's position "usurps judicial review of criminal judgments, and is in direct violation of his duty to faithfully execute Pennsylvania law."

    Resolving the debate is now up to the state Supreme Court, which on Thursday heard oral arguments on the constitutional challenge to Wolf's seven-month-old ban on the state's ultimate penalty, which was last used in 1999.

    Wolf announced the moratorium Feb. 13, when he also granted a reprieve for Terrance Williams, 49, a former star quarterback for Germantown High School, who was to have been executed March 4 for the 1984 murder of a Germantown church volunteer.

    Wolf said he would sign no more death warrants until he gets the report of a legislative task force studying the future of capital punishment in Pennsylvania.

    Arguing before the high court's five justices in their City Hall courtroom, Hugh Burns, chief of appeals for the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, decried Wolf's reprieve for Terrance Williams as halting an execution approved by every appeals court.

    Burns said Wolf "violated the separation of powers" among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of state government by suspending the death penalty.

    State Deputy General Counsel H. Geoffrey Moulton Jr., a former federal prosecutor and law professor representing Wolf, argued that a governor's authority to grant reprieves to condemned inmates has been part of the state constitution since colonial times and has been regularly used.

    Moulton told the justices that in 1961, Gov. David L. Lawrence did the same thing: stopped signing death warrants until receiving the report of a state task force.

    Wolf has signed two more reprieves for inmates facing execution since Williams' reprieve, Moulton said.

    "This governor does not have increased power," Moulton said. "If people are unhappy when this governor issues reprieves, they can either choose another governor or amend the constitution."

    The justices held the appeal for further review; the court has no deadline for ruling.

    The justices appeared to have different perspectives on the import of Wolf's actions.

    Justice Correale F. Stevens seemed open to Burns' argument that Wolf was abusing the reprieve authority.

    Stevens noted that the legislative task force on the death penalty, created in 2011 and expected to report in 2013, is still at work after several extensions.

    "I wonder whether or not this [moratorium pending the task force report] is creating a policy where the Supreme Court becomes irrelevant," Stevens said.

    Burns agreed that Wolf was "certainly exercising judicial powers" by not enforcing a law until a task force report.

    Justice J. Michael Eakin suggested that the court may not have a constitutional issue to address and that Wolf muddied the question by calling it a "moratorium" instead of simply issuing a series of reprieves.

    "If he had kept his mouth shut and not signed any death warrants, would he have done anything unconstitutional?" Eakin asked Burns.

    Burns replied that the state has adopted a "rule of law" by which the governor must consider reprieves on a case-by-case basis, not a blanket suspension of the death penalty.

    "It doesn't seem right to me," Burns said.

    Both Justice Max Baer and Chief Justice Thomas G. Saylor questioned whether the high court had to do anything, given that the task force and whatever recommendations it makes are not yet reality.

    "Isn't this premature?" Baer asked Burns.

    http://www.philly.com/philly/news/po...h_penalty.html

Page 17 of 19 FirstFirst ... 71516171819 LastLast

Thread Information

Users Browsing this Thread

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

Tags for this Thread

Posting Permissions

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