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Thread: Tennessee Capital Punishment News

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    Tennessee Capital Punishment News

    District attorneys in Tennessee say they want to kill a death penalty study committee charged with reviewing how the state carries out capital punishment.

    Prosecutors argue the 16-member panel has a majority who oppose the death penalty, The (Nashville) Tennessean reported Monday.

    James Wally Kirby, executive director of the Tennessee District Attorney Generals Conference, has gone so far as to tell state legislators there is a concerted effort among some committee members to abolish the death penalty.

    I'm not comfortable with the makeup of the committee, Kirby said. I don't know of any of our members that are in favor of extending the committee for another year.

    The committee has representatives from the state attorney general's office, local district attorneys, public defenders, the Tennessee Bar Association, criminal defense lawyers and victims' rights organizations, the newspaper said.

    Since being created last year, the committee has considered such things as the costs of imposing the death penalty, who is sentenced to death, and the quality of the lawyers representing the accused.

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    A brief reprieve may be over for inmates on Tennessee's death row, as the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way Wednesday for executions by injection to resume in this country.

    Within hours of the ruling, the Tennessee attorney general's office was preparing to ask the courts to lift stays of execution on several inmates whose scheduled execution dates passed months ago.


    Executions have been on hold around the country while the high court considered a Kentucky case that questioned whether injection is a humane method of execution. On Wednesday, the court ruled that it is, allowing the most frequently used method of execution in this country to resume.

    For Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, a death penalty supporter, the ruling came as a validation. "What it means is that the Supreme Court has said, as I've been maintaining for five years, I guess now, is that lethal injection is a legitimate constitutional method of execution," Bredesen said.

    If executions resume in Tennessee, they probably will begin with the case of Edward Jerome Harbison, who was scheduled to die in January for beating an elderly woman to death while robbing her home. But questions about Tennessee's lethal injection protocols prompted first a federal judge and then the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals to order a stay of execution not just for Harbison, but for every lethal injection death penalty case in the state in September.

    State moves forward
    Tennessee, like Kentucky and many other states, administers a three-drug cocktail at executions: a sedative, then a paralytic, and finally a drug to stop the heart and lungs. The issue that concerned the courts is whether there are enough safeguards in place to guarantee that the drugs are administered properly, and in the right order. If not, a prisoner can endure an excruciating death, wide awake and unable to move as the final lethal injection kills him.

    As far as the Tennessee attorney general's office is concerned, the Supreme Court ruling settles the matter.

    "We think that the Supreme Court's decision … supports the state's position in Harbison that its lethal injection procedure is constitutional," the office said in a statement Wednesday. "The state will file a motion promptly asking the 6th Circuit to allow the Harbison appeal to go forward."

    If the 6th Circuit lifts its stay of execution, it would be up to the state Supreme Court to set a new execution date.

    Harbison's attorney, Steve Kissinger, told The Associated Press that his appeal would go forward and that the Kentucky case ruling did not an swer all the questions he had raised.

    Two other Tennessee inmates have been granted stays of execution pending the outcomes of both the Kentucky case and the Harbison case.

    A federal judge issued a stay of execution in December for Paul Dennis Reid, who has been sentenced to death multiple times for a series of slayings at Middle Tennessee fast-food restaurants. Earlier that same month, another federal judge postponed the execution of Pervis Payne, who was convicted of fatally stabbing a Millington woman and her 2-year-old daughter in 1987.

    There are 96 inmates on Tennessee's death row.

    Justices want scrutiny
    While the Supreme Court turned back the constitutional challenge to lethal injection by a vote of 7-2, justices warned states to take a careful look at their lethal injection protocols.

    Chief Justice John Roberts' opinion left open the possibility of future challenges if states refuse to adopt alternative methods that significantly reduce the risk of severe pain.

    Tennessee has spent the past year taking a hard look at its lethal injection methods. The governor ordered a 90-day hold on executions last year, pending a review of the state's protocols.

    State Sen. Doug Jackson, D-Dickson, chairs the legislature's Death Penalty Task Force, and while he supports the death penalty, he agrees that there is room for improvement in Ten nessee. He favors a change in the drug regimen — either a single injection, like the one used in animal euthanasia, or getting rid of the paralyzing drug that can mask a botched execution — and better medical supervision at executions.

    Once those safeguards are in place, Jackson said, "I think we should push forward on executions."

    "Justice delayed is justice denied. There are several vicious killers (whose) day of reckoning has been postponed," he said.

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    NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Members of a death penalty review board said they would resume meetings this week to analyze the state's criminal justice system.

    Two of the board's subcommittees will meet Thursday and Friday to review a range of topics like the appeals process for capital cases, evidence collection and police interrogations.

    State Sen. Doug Jackson, a co-chair on the committee, said the appeals process takes too long in death penalty cases.

    One committee was expected to look at the possibility of direct appeals to the state Supreme Court, instead of moving through the state Court of Appeals first.

    The board was made up of lawmakers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, victims rights groups and others who make recommendations to the General Assembly.

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    Did you know that its a state law that Tennessee judges have one year to rule on a death penalty appeal?

    If you didn't, don't feel bad, because it's a law that has been ignored by judges for more than a decade.

    When attorneys for convicted killer Paul Reid filed an appeal for his death sentence, by law, judges have one year to make a decision.


    Reid appealed the decision in April of 2003. The judge is still waiting for paperwork, but Reid isn't the exception, he is the rule.

    "I think the general public and victims particularly feel like this is hypocrisy," said Death Penalty Commissioner Verna Wyatt.

    It’s not that it usually takes the judge more than a year to settle an appeal, because no judge has ever decided an appeal in less than a year in the law’s 13-year history.

    Some of the members of the new Death Penalty Commission are wondering why a law passed in 1995 has been completely ignored.

    "I'm willing to listen to the judges and those who are involved to tell us why it can’t be done. But as you look at the cases and see that sometimes it takes seven, eight, nine years, there is no way that it should take that long and that the victim’s family should have to wait and wait for justice to be done," said state Rep. Bill Dunn, R-Knoxville.

    Judges and post-conviction defense attorneys said the one-year time limit is ridiculous.

    "It's a question between promptness and fairness. Hitler ran the railroad on time. If that’s what you want, if you want to have a system that gives no justice, no fairness, in which there is no way to check to see if an innocent person is convicted, then sure, one year is fine. But none of us would want to participate in that system," said post-conviction defender Donald Dawson.

    But for victims family members like Verna Wyatt, it looks like death penalty cases are going to the bottom of the stack.

    "They are either dragging their feet because they don't believe in the death penalty, or they don't care and it looks really arrogant. It looks very arrogant," she said.

    The status of death penalty cases was put on paper for the first time in the law’s history on Thursday.

    http://www.wsmv.com/news/17054522/de...=nash&psp=news

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    Members of a legislative committee tasked with studying the death penalty in Tennessee are considering a bill that would create an independent legal commission to oversee capital cases.

    Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Gary Wade and newly appointed Chief Justice Janice Holder meet with the committee today to offer their opinions about the proposal.

    Holder said the state’s highest court was asked to consider creating a similar agency in 2004. They declined but “left the door open.”

    Holder said the court doesn’t have an opinion on a commission that would provide training for attorneys in capital cases and extra funding for defense attorneys who represent indigent clients.

    But she said the court was reluctant to go forward without additional funding.

    More details as they develop online and in Wednesday’s News Sentinel.

    http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2008/se...n/?partner=RSS

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    Tennessee's death penalty needs major reform to ensure that people facing execution get fair trials, said members of a legislative study committee which just ended 16 months of analyzing how capital crimes are prosecuted in this state.



    The study committee, which included people for and against the death penalty, was asked to look for ways to make capital punishment more fairly and accurately applied across the state.

    Four bills related to the recommendations have been introduced and are sponsored by the committee's chairmen, Sen. Doug Jackson, D-Dickson, and Rep. Kent Coleman, D-Murfreesboro.

    The committee wants the state legislature to:

    • Require defense attorneys in capital cases to be highly qualified;

    • Mandate that defense attorneys have uniform access to evidence against their clients;

    • Require police officers to record all interrogations related to a homicide case;

    • Force the state to set realistic timetables for litigating capital cases so families are not revictimized by decades of appeals.

    "This is not about trying to get a guilty defendant off," Jackson said. "This is about creating a process that is as fair as possible and as accurate as possible. It's about convicting the guilty, exonerating the innocent and having a trial as perfect as it can possibly be."

    Jackson, a co-chairman of the committee, is in favor of the death penalty. He lost a first cousin to a brutal murder, he said, and he believes her killer belongs on death row, where he is sitting. But Jackson says there are many reasons to reform the system that sends offenders to the death chamber, and he believes the costliest recommendation, the $8 million creation of an independent authority to oversee defense of those facing death row, is most important.

    Though similar committees in some states like Maryland and New Jersey have recommended their states abolish the death penalty, Tennessee's committee looked only at how to make the system more fair and accurate.



    The state executed Steve Henley on Feb. 4 by injection, the first execution by that method since U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger ruled in September 2007 that the three-drug lethal injection process was cruel and unusual. Trauger barred the state from using that method, but the state is appealing that ruling. For coverage of Steve Henley's execution, click here.

    Charles Strobel, an advocate for the homeless who represented Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights on the committee, said it's a major concern that virtually all death row inmates are indigent.

    "The state of Tennessee has no margin for error," Strobel said. "Death is a different sentence. We must be 100 percent fair and accurate."

    He called upon elected officials to declare a moratorium on the death penalty, saying there are too many unresolved issues.

    Second study sought

    The committee also passed a resolution asking the state to commission another, more extensive study of the issues they didn't tackle, among them the record keeping related to capital cases, whether mentally ill defendants should face the death penalty and how to better serve the families of murder victims.

    "I think my biggest surprise, though I had an idea, is that the death penalty is a very expensive process," said Rep. Bill Dunn, R–Knoxville. "It has to be in order to get the right verdict, but I don't think the average taxpayer knows what it costs to seek this penalty."

    Neither does the state, according to the report. The comptroller's office testified that no effective way exists to track the costs of capital punishment cases to the state.



    Dunn hopes the bills recommended by the committee will be passed by the full General Assembly this year.

    "Obviously, in politics, you never know what people will do to score points and make a point," Dunn said. "We hope they'll look at the time and effort we put in, and I think most people will agree we will have a better system if we pass this legislation."

    Two members of the committee voted against the final draft of the report on Thursday, citing opposition to the costly recommendation of creating an independent authority to oversee the representation of suspects facing the death penalty, starting with their trials.

    http://www.tennessean.com/article/20...00376/-1/rss05

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    The Tennessee Department of Correction says its executions will now be carried out three hours earlier.

    Corrections Commissioner Gayle Ray said Monday that after June 1 state executions will take place at 10 p.m. instead of 1 a.m.

    She says the decision was made in consideration of crime victim's families, prison staff and the general public.

    Ray says a survey of 16 states with the death penalty show that most of them have set their executions earlier than midnight.

    The last execution in Tennessee was in December when 53-year-old Cecil Johnson was put to death for killing three people while robbing a Nashville convenience store. He was officially declared dead at 1:34 a.m.

    http://www.wbir.com/news/local/story...3&provider=rss

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    New Law Makes Killing Of Pregnant Woman Aggravating Factor In Death Penalty Consideration

    New legislation co-sponsored by state Rep. Kent Coleman to toughen the penalties on those committing the most heinous crimes came into effect this month.

    The law, HB2693, makes the murder of a pregnant woman an aggravating factor in the consideration of the death penalty in first-degree murder cases.

    Rep. Coleman is the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, which has jurisdiction over civil and criminal law in the state, as well as law enforcement agencies and individual property rights.

    “We have the death penalty in place in Tennessee to punish those who commit the most unforgivable crimes in our society,” Rep. Coleman stated. “The taking of two lives, one yet unborn, is without a doubt a truly unconscionable and unpardonable act.”

    http://www.chattanoogan.com/articles/article_180938.asp

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    New Lethal Injection Plan May Be Needed

    awmakers are asking the Department of Correction to come up with a plan if lethal injection isn't an option due to a shortage of one of the drugs used.

    As of Wednesday morning, there were three death row inmates scheduled to die by lethal injection: kidnapper and killer Steven West on Nov. 9, child rapist and murderer Billy Irick on Dec. 9 and killer Edward Harbison on Feb. 15.

    However, the state of Tennessee has enough lethal injection for just one execution because one of the three drugs is not being manufactured right now. The company that makes it said it hopes to have it ready by winter 2011 but has not filled some back orders dating back to February.

    Sen. Jim Tracy, who sits on the Prison Oversight Committee, said the state has the ability to switch the lethal injection protocol without changing the law.

    The Tennessee Department of Correction provides no hints at what it will do. The department told Channel 4 News on Wednesday "there is no news."

    If Tennessee attempts to change lethal injection drugs, there are possible legal challenges and delays that could last longer than the drug shortage.

    Kentucky said it hopes the drug becomes available by March. To go through all the legal hoops to change protocol would take some time. Some executions will be postponed in Kentucky.

    http://www.wsmv.com/news/25026208/detail.html

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    Tennessee's lethal injection challenged

    Wanda Kay Walker sat through a day of court testimony Thursday on whether Tennessee's death-row inmates feel severe pain and suffering when they are executed.

    The 55-year-old Grand Rivers, Ky., nurse doesn't care.

    Twenty-four years ago, Stephen Michael West took three hours to rape and stab to death her mother, Wanda Romines, and her 15-year-old sister, Sheila Romines.

    "Anything he goes through is going to be an easier death than my family had and will probably be an easier death than any of us will have," she said.

    Ten days before West's Nov. 9 scheduled execution in a Nashville prison, the Tennessee Supreme Court delayed the convicted Union County murderer's death. West's lawyers brought to the court evidence they say shows that inmates are awake and in pain when given the drugs that paralyze the muscles and stop the heart.

    The state constitution says there must be a "demonstrated risk of severe pain" to qualify as cruel and unusual punishment, which would be prohibited.

    The state Supreme Court instructed Davidson County Chancellor Claudia Bonnyman to hear the evidence for both sides of the case in a two-day hearing, which is expected to conclude today. The hearing will begin at 9 a.m. with the state attorney general's expert witness.

    West was not in the courtroom Thursday but was represented by federal public defender Stephen Kissinger and a team of five other lawyers.

    Dr. David Lubarsky, an anesthesiologist and Duke University professor, testified that autopsy reports and witness accounts of executed Tennessee inmates reveal that the condemned feel pain similar to what someone would feel when drowning or being buried alive.

    In the state's three-drug execution cocktail, the first drug, sodium thiopental, is supposed to render the inmate unconscious. Next, the inmate is given pancuronium bromide to paralyze the muscles and then potassium chloride to stop the heart. Lubarsky said the level of sodium thiopental given to inmates in Tennessee is not enough. Kissinger submitted evidence to the court that one woman, a minister, who watched a recent execution saw the inmate first turn blue and then a deep blue as the drugs were being shot into him.

    "It makes it very palatable to those observing," Lubarsky said. But, "it's extremely painful and disturbing" to the inmate.

    The state, represented by Mark Hudson, is expected today to call its expert, Dr. Feng Li. According to court documents, Li will testify that Lubarsky's studies aren't accurate because the autopsies on the inmates were conducted hours after their deaths.

    Lubarsky testified Thursday that time would not affect the levels of sodium thiopental in the bodies.

    The hours of testimony were filled with jargon from doctors and lawyers.

    Sitting in court with Walker and her husband, 39-year-old Regina Cooper Patterson sat clenching a three-page, handwritten note to the court.

    In it, she describes her best friend, Sheila Romines, and the life that was taken away. She concludes her letter by saying: "Please remember Sheila and Wanda felt the pain while begging for their lives while he felt no mercy and spared them nothing."

    Although a message from the victims' friend is not likely to be heard in an evidentiary hearing, she wrote the letter just in case.

    West's execution has been rescheduled for Nov. 30.

    http://www.tennessean.com/article/20...50/1017/NEWS01

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