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Thread: New Mexico Capital Punishment News

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    New Mexico Capital Punishment News

    The death penalty will be debated this week in an Albuquerque court room.

    Two years ago, Bernalillo County Sheriff's Deputy James McGrane was shot to death in the east mountains.

    The man accused of that crime, Michael Paul Astorga, is still waiting to be tried. He pleaded not guilty to murder charges.

    His lawyers and prosecutors agree about one thing: before they can even argue about Astorga's guilt or innocence, the need to settle a question about the constitutionality of New Mexico's death penalty law.

    The district attorney wants to ask potential jurors about the death penalty. That is the punishment prosecutors want to pursue if Astorga is convicted of killing McGrane.

    Astorga's lawyers say that studies show jurors willing to hand out the death penalty are predisposed to finding a defendant guilty. Therefore, it's not fair to ask the question.

    In the first day of proceedings Monday, retired lawyer Marcia Wilson told the judge that she'd made a study of death penalty cases in New Mexico for a Bar Association project in 2000, then expanded it as an avocation over the years.

    Defense attorney Gary Mitchell presented his analysis of Wilson's data.

    "If the victim is white, we give the death penalty far more often and a higher percentage if the victim is white than we do if the victim is Hispanic, African-American or Asian or Native American," Mitchell said, adding that Astorga would not get a fair trial if the death penalty is in effect when his trial gets underway.

    But later under cross-examination, Wilson admitted that it was not a scientific study and it had not been subject to any kind of academic review.

    Prosecutors went on to point out that several notorious death penalty cases were either misrepresented in Wilson's database or missing entirely.

    Both the prosecution and defense are expected to call several expert witnesses. The hearing could last all week.

    Judge Candelaria will preside over the case. Whatever the judge rules is expected to be challenged in New Mexico's Supreme Court.

    The actual murder trial may not begin until this summer.

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    New Mexicans gather to support repealing death penalty

    The Roundhouse was filled with shouts of "Governor! Governor!" as an exuberant crowd cheered Gov. Bill Richardson's support of their cause.

    About 150 people gathered on Monday to convince New Mexico legislators to repeal the death penalty in New Mexico.

    The New Mexico Coalition to Repeal the Death Penalty hosted the rally in Santa Fe on Monday.

    "I am preaching to the choir, but there is a man I know who has discernment on this issue: (the) governor," said Allen Sanchez of the New Mexico Catholic Bishops.

    House Bill 285, introduced by Representative Gail Chasey, proposes abolishing the death penalty and replacing it with the sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of release or parole. The bill will be voted on during this legislative session.

    Death row exonerees and family members of murder victims also spoke at the rally.

    Juan Melendez, a native New Mexican, said he spent nearly 20 years on death row and wants to ensure that no one else has to go through that torment.

    "I spent 17 years, eight months and one day on death row for a crime I didn't commit, and it was terrible for me," he said.

    Melendez was released from death row in 2002, becoming the 99th death row prisoner to be exonerated in the United States since 1973.

    Ray Krone, who was the 100th exoneree, said it's important to overcome legal mistakes that can lead to wrongful imprisonment on death row.

    "There are reasons these things happen: discrimination, faulty investigation, poor representation," he said. "You can never release an innocent man from the grave."

    Michelle Ginger, a member of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, said her father was shot in Santa Rosa but that she does not want revenge, though most people expect her to.

    "It seems like a no-brainer that you don't teach people that killing is the wrong thing to do by killing someone," she said. "If you've ever lived through this, why would you ever want to do that to someone else?"

    http://media.www.dailylobo.com/media...-3621521.shtml

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    Death penalty repeal heads to Judiciary panel

    The bill that would abolish capital punishment in New Mexico cleared another hurdle Tuesday when it got a do-pass recommendation on a 5-2 party-line vote in the Senate Public Affairs Committee.

    Senate Bill 285, sponsored by Rep. Gail Chasey, D-Albquerque, now goes to Senate Judiciary, which is considered the real test for the bill. In recent sessions, death-penalty abolition bills have died in Senate Judiciary.

    Opponents of the bill outnumbered supporters at the meeting.

    Only person spoke against the bill, District Attorney Janetta Hicks of the Fifth Judicial District. She noted that she represents the district in which the last person executed in New Mexico, Terry Clark, raped and murdered 9-year-old Dena Lynn Gore of Artesia. Clark was executed in 2001 for the 1986 crime.

    David Keys, a professor of criminology at New Mexico State University, told the committee that even though there has only been one execution in New Mexico since 1960, taxpayers pay about $2.75 million a year for death-penalty cases. Most of that, he said, is for attorneys, psychiatrists and other court expenses.

    In response to arguments that there would be similar expenses if the state creates the life-without-possibility-of-parole sentence, Keys said he would expect judges to keep appeals going for those receiving that sentence.

    ``If someone's life is on the line, it's different,'' he told a reporter before the hearing. ``When lives aren't in danger there's not the necessary vigilance you see in death-penalty cases.''

    Keys also said capital punishment is no deterrent to crime. ``People in interrogation rooms know that only one percent of those convicted of first-degree murder are ever going to go to the death chamber,'' he said.

    Even though it wasn't discussed at the committee hearing, senators last week received a letter from Ron Keine, who was sentenced to death in a sensational Albuquerque murder case in 1974.

    ``Although innocent, I was nearly executed,'' Keine wrote. ``I was pronounced guilty by 12 men and women who had no reasonable doubt in their mind that I committed a particularly brutal and atrocious murder of a 26-year-old man, William Velten. I am among the ranks of 130 exonerated men and women in the United States who were almost put to death in error.''

    Keine is one of the four members of the California-based Vagos motorcycle gang who spent 22 months on death row. He and his co-defendants were freed only after the real murderer, Kerry Rodney Lee, confessed after a religious conversion. Keine and the other convicted Vagos members spent 22 months on death row until after Lee's confession. In a 2005 interview, Keine said he was close enough to being put in a gas chamber that an assistant warden came to talk to him about what he wanted for his last meal.

    He's the last of the four convicted Vagos members still alive.

    Keine, who lives in Sterling Heights, Mich. told a reporter Tuesday that he'd like to come to New Mexico to personally testify about his experience but can't because of economic reasons.

    In the interview, Keine, who is a past chairman of the Clinton Township, Mich., Republican Party, said ``I'm disappointed that more Republicans haven't supported this bill.'' When the bill was debated in the House last month, four of the 25 House Republicans voted for it. But in committee votes in recent years, no Republican senators have voted to abolish the death penalty.

    ``Most of the 130 exonerees were not freed by the system, but in spite of it,'' Keine wrote in his letter to senators. ``They were saved by pure luck, usually when outside sources for one reason or another took up their plight.``

    Voting in favor of the do-pass recommendation for SB285 were Sen. Mary Jane Garcia, D-Dona Ana; Sen. Cynthia Nava, D-Las Cruces; and Sens. Tim Eichenberg, Dede Feldman and Sen. Eric Griego, all Albuquerque Democrats.

    Voting against the bill were Sen. Vern Asbill, R-Carlsbad, and Sen. Gay Kernan, R-Hobbs.

    Absent from the meeting were Sens. Mark Boitano and George Munoz.

    http://www.pntonline.com/news/death_...eine_bill.html

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    New Mexico's Gov to be honored at Colosseum

    ROME (AP) — The governor of the American state of New Mexico said Wednesday that the world is moving toward abolishing the death penalty and urged the United States to follow.

    Gov. Bill Richardson was in Rome to take part in a ceremony at the Colosseum, which was lit Wednesday night to mark his decision to end the death penalty in New Mexico. Richardson also met with Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican.

    Richardson, a Democrat, signed a bill last month abolishing the death penalty for crimes committed after July 1, replacing it with life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    "I didn't want America to continue being isolated with this position, because the world was moving in another direction," he said. "It's about time that America starts, along with the rest of the world, following in abolishing the death penalty."

    He spoke at a news conference organized by the Sant'Egidio Community, an international lay organization of the Roman Catholic Church that opposes capital punishment.

    New Mexico became the second state to ban executions since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. New Jersey was the first, in 2007.

    Richardson met with the pope at the end of Benedict's weekly general audience at the Vatican. He said the pontiff was informed of the bill and was "very positive, and thanked me for that." The Vatican opposes the death penalty.

    The Colosseum has become a symbol of the global fight against capital punishment. Since 1999, the ancient Roman arena has been illuminated every time a death sentence is commuted somewhere in the world or a government abolishes capital punishment.

    http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...zE39AD97J4R8O0

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    New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson signed a bill Wednesday repealing the death penalty in his state, his office confirmed.


    New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson signed legislation repealing the state's death penalty.

    "Regardless of my personal opinion about the death penalty, I do not have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime," Richardson said in a statement Wednesday.

    "If the State is going to undertake this awesome responsibility, the system to impose this ultimate penalty must be perfect and can never be wrong."

    The bill replaces the death penalty with life without the possibility of parole.

    "Faced with the reality that our system for imposing the death penalty can never be perfect, my conscience compels me to replace the death penalty with a solution that keeps society safe," he said.

    Prior to signing the legislation, Richardson received thousands of e-mails and phone calls on whether he should sign legislation to abolish the death penalty, his office says.

    As of noon Wednesday, the governor's office said it had received 10,847 phone calls, e-mails and walk-in comments from people who wanted to voice their opinions on the legislation.

    Of those, 8,102 were for a repeal of the death penalty and 2,745 were against it, according to Richardson's office. The number included phone calls, e-mails and walk-ins to the governor's office, the statement said.

    In addition, Richardson met Monday with more than 100 New Mexicans to discuss the issue, his office said.

    The state Legislature approved the measure Friday.

    Other states also have considered repealing their capital punishment laws this year. In Kansas, state senators voted Monday to send such a bill back to committee, The Kansas City Star reported.



    http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/03/18/...ion=cnn_latest

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    The repeal of the repeal of the death penalty is not dead; it hits New Mexico airwaves Monday.

    Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White is spear heading an effort to collect signatures to add a referendum to the 2010 general election ballot.

    "It's a powerful commercial; the death penalty was put in place so that the most heartless killers will be met with the most severe punishment," White said. "The anti death penalty folks are very well organized they have a lot of money and they will fight us so that we do not even get the point where we can do signatures."

    Sheriff White said he is already getting opposition from those groups fighting to keep the repeal in place.

    White said the aim of the commercial is to raise awareness about why the death penalty should be reinstated.

    "It is a layer of protection for all law enforcement," White said.

    Anti death penalty groups claim capital punishment does not deter crime, and that states are unable to prevent accidental executions of innocent people.

    "Regardless of my personal opinion about the death penalty, I do not have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime," Gov. Bill Richardson said after signing the bill last March.

    Richardson struggled with his decision, doing research and taking time to visit death row in Santa Fe.

    Even a day later he had his doubts saying he would still like to see an accused cop killer sentenced to the death penalty.

    Since 1912 when New Mexico became a state, there have only been three statewide ballot referendums.

    Only one passed. The most recent was in 1964.

    http://www.krqe.com/dpp/news/crime/c...n_200904051830

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    Death penalty supporters push to 'repeal the repeal'

    New Mexico death penalty supporters plan to try to bring back capital punishment in the legislative session that starts next week. They've been working on "repealing the repeal" ever since the state did away with it two years ago, and now they are ready to put it on the agenda for the 60 day session.

    Lawmakers are likely to see an attempt to bring back the death penalty as a legislative bill, and they will certainly see an effort to put it on the ballot in the 2012 general election as a constitutional amendment. That's the path favored by Rep. Dennis Kintigh, a Roswell Republican and retired FBI agent.

    "There's a lot of good people on both sides of the issue," Kintigh said. "It's a fundamental issue of how we deal with this in society and I believe the best way to deal with these kinds of issues is to let the voters decide, give it to the voters."

    But lawmakers around the state in both parties told Eyewitness News 4 it isn't one of their priorities for the session.

    "We're facing a fiscal crisis," said Rep. Al Park, (D) Albuquerque. "We need to work on the economy, public schools. The state of New Mexico has only utilized the death penalty once in the last 50 years."

    The state executed child-raping murderer Terry Clark with a lethal injection in 2001, the only execution since 1960.

    Republican Rep. Larry Larranaga of Albuquerque agreed with Park - now is not the time to re-visit the issue.

    "We have very pressing issues during this legislative session," Larranaga said. "There's the budget, education reform, we've got job creation, we have the economy to look at."

    Governor Susana Martinez, a former prosecutor, has repeatedly said she favors the death penalty and would sign legislation bringing it back, but Park and Larranaga, and other lawmakers said it won't get to her desk this year.

    They pointed out that it takes a super-majority in the House and Senate to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot, and while the 2010 election put more conservatives in the House, the Senate was not on the ballot. Its political alignment is the same as it was in 2009, when the bill to repeal the death penalty passed by six votes.

    http://www.kob.com/article/stories/s1926384.shtml

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    NM State Rep Moves To Bring Back Death Penalty

    In 2009, New Mexico joined 14 other states in the U.S. that don't impose death penalty.

    But it can all change now, with State Rep. Dennis Kintigh pushing to bring it back with the help of people's votes.

    The current state law for capital punishment can be changed by way of constitutional amendment. It means that if it passes both the House and the Senate, the final decision goes to the voters.

    Kintigh said the sentence will only apply to crimes like murder of police officers and children.

    “I'm totally against the death penalty, but I do think the people should decide,” said Kintigh. “There are criminals who will think twice about using a weapon on an officer because of that death penalty.”

    While some New Mexicans are against it, Public Safety Director Darren White said having death penalty provides a layer of protection for police officers.

    White, a former sheriff, had one of his own officers gunned down during a traffic stop in 2006.

    Kintigh understood that the reinstatement of death penalty will spark strong emotions throughout the state but he said he won't shy away from moving forward.

    The Catholic Church had publicly stated that it is against death penalty.

    http://www.koat.com/news/26565947/detail.html

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    Death penalty reinstatement dies in committee



    Two different bids to bring back the death penalty in New Mexico were tabled in a House committee Tuesday night on party-line votes.

    Rep. Dennis Kintigh, R-Roswell, sponsored HB 371 and HJR 7. The joint resolution would have put the question of reinstating the death penalty on the 2012 ballot as a constitutional amendment. The bill would have reinstated the law statutorily.

    Both failed on identical 3-2 votes in the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committeepo.

    “No doubt this is a very emotional issue for New Mexico,” Kintigh said in a statement. “I believe the people should have a bigger voice in this decision when it comes to the ultimate punishment for justice.”

    Gov. Susana Martinez has called for the reinstatement of the death penalty both during the gubernatorial campaign and since being sworn in as governor. She even mentioned the issue as a priority in her state of the state address on the first day of the legislative session.

    The death penalty was abolished in New Mexico in March of 2009.

    Albuquerque Public Safety Director Darren White created a political action committee to attempt to “repeal the repeal” of the death penalty. White advised Martinez on her transition.

    http://newmexicoindependent.com/6920...s-in-committee

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    Gov. Martinez to work towards higher punishment for child abusers

    This week marks the nine year anniversary of the horrific death of Baby Brianna.

    Governor Susana Martinez was the Dona Ana District Attorney at the time and put the baby's father, uncle and mother behind bars.

    This Las Cruces case shows that if Governor Martinez has a special agenda, it is to protect the children of New Mexico from these types of heinous crimes.

    Martinez has had a picture of Baby Brianna in her office for nine years now.

    Looking at the picture Martinez explained, "she had a bite mark that was right here, on her cheek and it was an adult bite mark."

    Baby Brianna was killed when she was 5 months old and before that she was raped by her father and uncle. She had bite marks and fractures all over plus brain injuries.

    When she was buried, her family put a cage around her graveside. Two years ago Martinez made a personal plea for its removal.

    "I personally called and spoke with Brianna's mother in prison and asked her if she was aware of the cage. She told me that her family would take care of it," Martinez said.

    The cage remains around Brianna's grave site. Recently a bench was placed in front of the cage in Baby Brianna's honor.

    "I have probably handled 20 child abuse resulting in death cases in the past 25 years and every single one of them takes a piece of you away," Martinez said.

    Governor Martinez is ready to push for a change in New Mexico's laws, including bringing back the death penalty for child abuse that ends in death.

    "If anyone could see what we saw in Baby Brianna...not the photos...truly saw her and what she looked like, I can't imagine they would disagree with that," the Governor said.

    She explained that right now child abuse is a third degree felony, with a sentence of three years in prison.

    "There needs to be a greater level of punishment when you are abusing children. We are going to advocate for that and those kinds of changes," Martinez added.

    Soon after Martinez took office, 3-year-old Leeland Valdez of Pojoaque died. His mother and her boyfriend are accused of killing him.

    In response, Martinez shook up the Children, Youth and Families Department, but more still needs to be done and Brianna reminds her of that.

    "A lot of the times people when they are in public service (they) get so enmeshed into what they are doing, the day-to-day things that they forget why they do what they do and so that's why I brought that picture back with me knowing that there are many faces behind that picture," Martinez explained.

    After Baby Brianna's death, Martinez convinced New Mexico lawmakers to pass Brianna's law. Now when a child is abused and dies, the person responsible can get a life sentence. Before Brianna's law, the punishment was only 18 years in prison.

    http://www.kob.com/article/stories/S...ml?catcncp=504

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