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Thread: New Mexico Capital Punishment News

  1. #41
    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    New Mexico rekindles efforts to reinstate death penalty

    A Republican state lawmaker in New Mexico is reviving efforts to reinstate the death penalty as an option for convicted killers of police, children and corrections officers.

    Rep. Monica Youngblood of Albuquerque has pre-filed a bill that would bring back punishment by lethal injection to New Mexico. A spokesman for GOP Gov. Susana Martinez said Monday she supports the measure.

    A similar bill was approved by the state’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives in October during a special legislative session, but never taken up by the Senate. Democrats retook majority control of the Legislature in November elections.

    Last year’s proposal became fodder for election-season mailers accusing Democratic candidates of being weak on crime. Leading Democratic lawmakers including Senate majority leader Peter Wirth say they are disinclined to take up the legislation.

    http://www.artesianews.com/1408451/n...h-penalty.html
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  2. #42
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    House panel rejects bill to bring back death penalty

    By Steve Terrell
    The New Mexican

    When Juan Melendez was on Florida’s death row for a murder conviction, his mother built an altar with a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe surrounded by roses. She said five rosaries a day, asking for a miracle to exonerate him and bring him home safely. She also wrote Melendez a letter saying, “Have faith, put your trust in God and that miracle will happen. One day, you will be free.”

    It took 17 years, but the miracle happened. Melendez, 65, now living in Albuquerque, was freed in 2002 after the real killer came forward. Melendez said the letter gave him hope, but he didn’t know then that his mother was saving money to return his body to Puerto Rico after his execution.

    “No mother should ever have to go through that,” Melendez said Sunday to a committee of the state House of Representatives that considered a bill to reinstate the death penalty in New Mexico. “I think she suffered more than I did.”

    Democrats on the House Consumer and Public Affairs Committee blocked the death penalty bill after hearing from Melendez and about two dozen other opponents of capital punishment.

    As expected, the committee voted 3-2 on party lines to table the measure, effectively killing House Bill 72, sponsored by Rep. Monica Youngblood, R-Albuquerque.

    Her bill would have allowed for the death penalty in cases involving the murder of a child or law enforcement officer.

    Explaining the bill, Youngblood said it was aimed at “the evil in our society that would hurt a child in this way.” New Mexico recently has been the scene of several high-profile murders of children, including 10-year-old Victoria Martens of Albuquerque in August 2016 and 9-year-old Ashlynn Mike, who was found dead in Shiprock in May 2016.

    Youngblood said the question of capital punishment being a deterrent to crime is arguable. But she pointed to an October 2016 Albuquerque Journal poll that said a large majority of New Mexicans support bringing back the death penalty.

    Hobbs District Attorney Dianna Luce, Youngblood’s expert witness, listed several murderers in the state who received the death penalty, but added that only one person has been executed in New Mexico in more than 50 years. That was child killer Terry Clark in 2001.

    Luce also said, “New Mexico is the best place in the U.S. to be a criminal” because “our laws are not as strong as [other states].”

    Shortly before the committee’s vote, Melendez told The New Mexican he doubts the state will ever bring back the death penalty.

    “New Mexico does not deserve a law that costs that much money,” he said. “New Mexico does not deserve a law that does not deter crime. New Mexico does not deserve a law that is racist,” he said, referring to the fact that blacks and Hispanics are more likely to receive a death sentence than are whites convicted of murder.

    “You always have the risk of convicting an innocent man,” Melendez said, adding that you can release someone from prison but you can’t release someone from the grave.

    Melendez also appeared before the New Mexico Legislature in 2009, the year it repealed the death penalty.

    For seven years after that, the Legislature made no serious attempt to reinstate capital punishment. But last year, during a special session that began in late September, Gov. Susana Martinez put the death penalty on the agenda. The governor had initially said she wanted a one-day special session to resolve a budget deficit.

    The House of Representatives, then controlled by Republicans, passed the death penalty bill on a party-line vote following a grueling six-hour hearing that began in the predawn hours. The Senate, with Democrats in the majority, ignored the House bill.

    Critics of Martinez said the sole reason for the death penalty being considered during the special session was for political purposes. House members advanced the death penalty bill just a month before the general election. Indeed, even before the House vote in early October, Republicans were sending mailers blasting Democrats for voting against the death penalty.

    After the House committee killed the death penalty bill Sunday, Ben Baur, the state’s chief public defender, told The New Mexican, “I’m pleased that we’re not imposing new burdens on the state — financial burdens that would not do anything to reduce crime.”

    A fiscal analysis by the Legislative Finance Committee of HB 72 said reinstating executions could cost the state up to $7.2 million a year over a three-year period.

    The cost to incarcerate one person sentenced to the death penalty is $51,100 a year, the study says.

    In the analysis, the Administrative Office of the Courts estimated that a death penalty jury trial would cost $12,000 to $17,000 more than a non-death penalty case. More jury costs would be incurred because, after finding someone guilty in a death penalty case, a jury would have to determine whether to impose capital punishment.

    Youngblood said these figures represented a “worst-case scenario.”

    http://nmpoliticalreport.com/194099/...death-penalty/

  3. #43
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    GOP Lawmakers Eyes Return of Narrow New Mexico Death Penalty

    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — Recent child killings, attacks on officers and a rise in crime has some conservative New Mexico lawmakers calling for the state to reinstate the death penalty.

    State Rep. Monica Youngblood said Friday she will once again push for a bill that would bring back capital punishment for fatal attacks on law enforcement and in the murder of children.

    The Albuquerque Republican says the recent attack on correctional officers by two high-risk inmates and a jump in crime in Albuquerque show that criminals don't care.

    But Democrats say the death penalty is not a deterrent and is being used as a wedge issue.

    A similar measure failed this year.

    New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez who supports bringing back the death penalty has not said if she will include it on the legislative agenda next session.

    https://www.usnews.com/news/best-sta...-death-penalty
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  4. #44
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    Democrats outnumber Republicans in both legislative chambers.

  5. #45
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    New Mexico Republicans to resume effort to bring back death penalty

    By Andrew Oxford and Robert Nott
    The New Mexican

    Republicans will push to reinstate the death penalty when state lawmakers convene next week, setting up another clash over capital punishment nearly a decade after it was abolished in New Mexico.

    State Rep. Monica Youngblood, a Republican from Albuquerque, said Sunday she will file legislation allowing the death penalty for murders involving children, police or correctional officers.

    And Democratic legislators expect Gov. Susana Martinez will back the measure as well as several other sentencing bills, including a proposal to toughen the state’s “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” law — the likes of which have been controversial with criminal justice reform advocates around the country.

    Entering the last regular session of the prosecutor-turned-governor’s two-term administration, the push for tough-on-crime legislation might come to define the 30-day meeting at the Roundhouse and at the very least set up a showdown over a visceral issue ahead of an election later this year.

    The death penalty is likely to face strong opposition from Democrats who have raised concerns about the risk of executing the wrongly convicted. And they argue it is expensive. A fiscal analysis of a similar bill proposed in 2016 found that reinstating executions could cost the state up to $7.2 million a year over a three-year period.

    The Catholic Church has been staunchly opposed to capital punishment as well, maintaining simply that it is immoral.

    “It’s a nonstarter, as far as I am concerned,” Senate Majority Leader Peter Wirth, a Democrat from Santa Fe, told a crowd of about 100 people during a talk at Collected Works Bookstore on Sunday sponsored by the group Journey Santa Fe.

    But Youngblood argued most New Mexicans support the death penalty and that allowing prosecutors to pursue it in certain cases is only appropriate in the face of murders that have shocked the state, such as the killing of Victoria Martens, a 10-year-old Albuquerque girl from Youngblood’s district who was sexually assaulted and dismembered in 2016.

    Anyone who would murder a child, Youngblood said, should “not be in a position to hurt anyone again.”

    She added: “We need to make sure that those who murder police officers face those most stiff penalties.

    “Will every district attorney go after [the death penalty]? Absolutely not. It gives DAs the option to seek the death penalty in those specific cases.”

    New Mexico abolished the death penalty in 2009. Between 1979 and 2007, when the death penalty was an option to prosecutors, there were more than 200 death penalty cases filed. Fifteen men were sentenced to death. There was only one execution.

    Two convicted murderers in New Mexico sentenced before the death penalty was abolished are still appealing their cases.

    Reinstating capital punishment would be an unusual step as other states abolish the practice. Nineteen states do not have the death penalty, and governors in three more states and the District of Columbia have placed a moratorium on capital punishment.

    Martinez first said the death penalty should be an option for juries during her first State of the State address in January 2011.

    Youngblood went on to sponsor bills in 2016 and 2017 that would reinstate the death penalty for certain murders.

    House Republicans rammed through a bill similar to the one Youngblood will propose in the middle of the night during the 2016 special session. But the Democrat-controlled Senate did not take up the issue.

    And last year, Democrats quashed the bill in committee.

    But heading into an election year, with a jump in crime rates in New Mexico’s largest city, the issue appears a likely flashpoint at the Legislature.

    Wirth said Martinez wants her efforts to combat crime “to be her legacy.”

    Martinez already has said she wants lawmakers to vote on repealing and replacing a constitutional amendment on bail reform that she says is partially responsible for increased crime rates. That amendment, approved by 87 percent of voters in 2016, gives judges the right to detain suspects without bond before trial if they are considered dangerous or likely to flee. But that amendment also ensures some suspects will not be detained if they are not considered a risk to the community and just because they cannot afford bail.

    As a result, Martinez said in a Friday news conference, “It’s nothing but a revolving door at the jail.”

    Wirth said the amendment is working because “you get the dangerous criminals into the [prison] system and get those who need treatment and help out.” He said it costs the state $45,000 per year to incarcerate one inmate.

    Wirth said he does not see the governor and state legislators grappling in a battle over the budget, given both the Governor’s Office and the Legislative Finance Committee presented similar budget proposals — both supporting pay increases for state employees and teachers — last week.

    Crime aside, Wirth said he did not see many such battles looming for this session, particularly since both sides want to act quickly on a number of priorities — including closing tax loopholes that benefit online businesses and enacting a new nurses’ compact so the state does not have to contend with a serious nursing shortage almost overnight.

    The governor’s proposed $6.23 billion budget calls for a 1 percent pay increase for state employees and 2 percent for teachers. The Legislative Finance Committee’s budget suggests a 1.5 percent raise for all employees. For the most part, New Mexico has not raised salaries for its employees since 2014.

    Sen. Peter Wirth and Rep. Brian Egolf, D-Santa Fe, will hold a Legislative Town Hall event at 6 p.m. Monday, Jan. 8, at the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Fe at 208 Grant Avenue. It’s free and open to the public.

    http://www.santafenewmexican.com/new...e951357ef.html

  6. #46
    Senior Member CnCP Legend CharlesMartel's Avatar
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    New Mexico may execute 2 long after death-penalty repeal

    KFDA

    SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) - New Mexico's Supreme Court is weighing whether the state's two remaining death row inmates still can be executed after the state's abolition of capital punishment.

    Oral arguments were scheduled for Tuesday in the appeal of death sentences against Robert Fry and Timothy Allen for convictions in two brutal killings.

    New Mexico repealed the death penalty for future murderers without canceling death sentences against Fry and Allen.

    Attorneys for Fry say the execution no longer fits his crimes, while the state attorney general's office says it still is appropriate.

    The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in 2014 on whether the sentences against Fry and Allen are constitutional. The court ordered further briefings on whether execution is disproportionate to their crimes.

    New Mexico's last execution was in 2001 against child-killer Terry Clark.

    http://www.newschannel10.com/story/3...penalty-repeal
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  7. #47
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    New Mexico Supreme Court vacates death penalty for last 2 inmates

    SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — The New Mexico Supreme Court on Friday set aside the death penalty for the final two inmates awaiting execution after the state’s 2009 repeal of capital punishment.

    In a split decision, the state’s highest court concluded that the death sentences issued to Timothy Allen and Robert Fry were disproportionate in comparison with comparable murder cases.

    The cases were returned to a district court to impose life sentences to prison. Allen and Fry, ages 56 and 45 respectively, will be eligible for parole after serving 30 years, but would immediately begin serving additional sentences of at least 25 years. Fry will not be eligible for release, the court said.

    New Mexico repealed the death penalty in 2009. Allen and Fry remained on death row because of prior convictions and their death sentences.

    Allen was found guilty of kidnapping, attempted rape and the murder of 17-year-old Sandra Phillips in 1994.

    Fry was sentenced to death in 2000 for fatally stabbing and bludgeoning Betty Lee, a mother of five.

    In separate cases, Fry was sentenced to life in prison for three murders in 1996 and 1998 in San Juan County.

    New Mexico’s dormant capital punishment statute prohibits death sentences that are excessive and disproportionate.

    Justice Barbara Vigil, in the lead majority opinion, said there was little to differentiate between the inmates’ crimes and equally horrendous cases in which defendants were not sentenced to death.

    “We find no meaningful distinction which justifies imposing the death penalty upon Fry and Allen,” she said.

    In the dissenting opinion, Chief Justice Judith Nakamura said the decision overrides the Legislature’s intention to preserve the death penalty for prior sentences.

    “The majority misstates the governing law and has done what our Legislature would not: repeal the death penalty in its entirety,” she said.

    The Supreme Court previously affirmed the death sentence convictions issued before the state’s repeal of the death penalty as constitutionally allowable.

    It agreed in 2013 to consider new appeals by Fry and Allen, and wavered for years on ground rules for deciding whether the death penalty still fits the crimes when considering other cases.

    Defense attorneys urged the court to cast a wide net for sentencing in comparable cases with more appalling murders involving defenseless children and the elderly.

    New Mexico’s last execution in 2001 put to death child-killer Terry Clark after he dropped all appeals.

    He was the first person executed by the state since 1960.

    Under New Mexico’s 1979 death penalty statute, juries imposed death sentences in 15 cases. State court officials say seven of those sentences were reversed, five were commuted in 1986 by former Gov. Toney Anaya, a Democrat, and one inmate died on death row.

    In recent years, former Republican Gov. Susana Martinez sought unsuccessfully to reinstate the death penalty in limited circumstances. She termed out of office last year.

    The court’s 3-2 decision included three justices who remained on the complex case involving Allen and Fry after retirement.

    In a concurring opinion with the majority, retired Justice Charles Daniels said he could not “honestly look anyone in the eye and say that executing these two defendants would be proportionate when compared to non-deadly punishment our state has meted out in virtually all equally serious first-degree murder cases.”

    https://www.apnews.com/9a27b70cfd0f40efad7dd50944939daf

  8. #48
    Moderator Ryan's Avatar
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    New Mexico lawmakers visit state prison, view execution chamber

    Behind fences topped with razor wire, New Mexico’s old death chamber sits empty.

    A red phone still hangs on the wall – a relic from when the governor could halt an execution at the last moment.

    But there’s no steel table – or much of anything else – left in the 80-square-foot room, which lies inside a small, musty building at the Penitentiary of New Mexico.

    A handful of New Mexico legislators this week got a rare peek at the execution chamber as part of a tour led by state prison officials. It’s where child-killer Terry Clark died in 2001, strapped down and pumped with a lethal combination of drugs.

    “I’m just relieved we don’t need this any longer,” Democratic Rep. Gail Chasey of Albuquerque said after seeing the execution chamber.

    She sponsored the 2009 legislation that ended New Mexico’s death penalty and replaced it with a life sentence, without the possibility of parole. Just last month, the state Supreme Court vacated the death sentences imposed on two inmates convicted before the 2009 repeal.

    The group of lawmakers touring the state penitentiary passed by a mural honoring correctional officers who died in the line of duty, visited classrooms where inmates pursue general equivalency diplomas, and stopped inside a library filled with well-worn paperback books.

    James Patterson – author of thrillers and other novels – is a popular request.

    Chasey was 1 of 6 Democratic lawmakers who toured New Mexico’s 864-bed maximum-security prison, just south of Santa Fe. The tour was part of Monday’s agenda for the legislative Courts, Corrections and Justice Committee, though most committee members skipped the tour.

    Chasey, co-chairwoman of the committee, said she wishes more lawmakers would visit the prison, to see first hand the restrictive conditions imposed on inmates.

    Rep. Eliseo Alcon, a Milan Democrat and former correctional officer himself, said it’s important for lawmakers to see for themselves the conditions inside the prison.

    “We’re responsible for these people,” he said.

    Alcon worked in the old main prison from 1975-77 – later the site of a vicious riot that killed 33 inmates in 1980.

    Lawmakers this week didn’t have any direct contact with inmates during the 3-hour tour, but men in yellow prison jumpsuits could be seen through cell-door windows and in day rooms. The penitentiary holds inmates of the highest-security classifications.

    Prison officials told legislators that they are trying to promote learning in a classroom setting to help rehabilitate inmates, rather than in noisy prison units.

    They also are tapping the inmates themselves to lead some programs – an arrangement that promotes peer learning and also provides a sense of purpose.

    “When they have to start caring for someone else, that’s when you see the transformation,” said Anthony Romero, deputy director of adult prisons.

    (Source: Albuquerque Journal)
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  9. #49
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ryan View Post

    Alcon worked in the old main prison from 1975-77 – later the site of a vicious riot that killed 33 inmates in 1980.
    The entire justice system in New Mexico has always been faulty, I'm amazed that news paper even mentions this event. The event in which not a single inmate was convicted of murder, or got a sentence that was appropriate for all of the destruction they caused.
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  10. #50
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    Since it hasn’t been mentioned yet, Bill Richardson, former governor of New Mexico who abolished it’s death penalty, died on September 1.
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