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Thread: Christopher Eugene Brooks - Alabama Execution - January 21, 2016

  1. #11
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Alabama Supreme Court denies death row inmate's request to halt execution

    By Kent Faulk
    AL.com

    The Alabama Supreme Court on Monday denied a death row inmate's request to halt his Jan. 21 execution.

    A federal judge also said Monday that he would rule "expeditiously" on Alabama Death Row inmate Christopher Eugene Brooks' request for an emergency request to delay his execution.

    If it happens, the execution would be the first in Alabama in 2-1/2 years. It also would be the first for Alabama's new drug combination for its lethal injection protocol.

    Brooks had asked the Alabama Supreme Court and U.S. District Court Judge Keith Watkins to stay his execution.

    Brooks' attorneys have argued that Brooks and five other inmates are waiting for a final evidentiary hearing on April 19 before Watkins on whether the state's new three-drug lethal injection execution violates the constitution against cruel and unusual punishment.

    The Alabama Attorney General's Office has argued that while the other death row inmates had filed their lawsuits contesting the lethal injection combination about a year ago, Brooks didn't ask to intervene in the other inmates' suits until November in an apparent effort to delay his execution.

    Watkins had set a hearing for Friday on Brooks' motion for a stay of execution. But on Monday Watkins cancelled the hearing stating that the stay motion and the one by the Attorney General's Office seeking dismissal of Brooks' intervention in the other inmates' complaints can both be resolved without a hearing.

    "An Order ruling on these two motions shall be entered expeditiously," Watkins wrote.

    Brooks was convicted in 1993 of murder during the course of a rape, robbery, and burglary for killing Jo Deann Campbell at the Ski Lodge Apartments in Homewood. A jury recommended Brooks receive the death penalty and a judge sentenced him to death.

    When he was sentenced Brooks bellowed at the victim's family that it "ain't over yet" before storming into the prisoners' passageway leading to the Jefferson County Jail.

    Brooks and Campbell, 23, met in 1991 when they worked at different summer camps on a lake in New York, where Brooks and his parents then lived.

    Brooks and a friend, Robert Leeper, came to Homewood on Dec. 30, 1992, to visit Campbell and stay the night.

    The next evening, police found Campbell's body stuffed under her bed, her badly beaten head wrapped in her sweat pants. Police testified they found one of Brooks' palm prints on Campbell's ankle and his thumbprint in her blood on her bedroom doorknob. A state forensic scientist testified that DNA tests matched semen from Campbell's body to Brooks.

    Police arrested Brooks and Leeper in Columbus, Ga., on charges that they bought beer, soda, gas and other items the day before with Campbell's credit card.

    Leeper was charged but not indicted in the murder. Leeper denied any knowledge of Campbell's murder and forensic evidence did not link him to the crime prosecutors said. Leeper was sentenced to 5 years after pleading guilty to credit card theft and was released on probation with time served awaiting trial in jail.

    http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/in...medium=twitter
    "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. #12
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Federal judge won't halt Alabama Death Row inmate's execution

    A federal court judge in Montgomery on Tuesday denied a request by an Alabama Death Row inmate to halt his execution next month for the 1992 slaying of a Homewood woman.

    U.S. District Court Judge Keith Watkins, in a 40-page order, denied Christopher Eugene Brooks' request for a stay of his Jan. 21 execution.

    The judge wrote that Brooks had unnecessarily delayed filing a legal challenge to the constitutionality of Alabama's lethal injection method. He stated Brooks also had failed to demonstrate a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of his legal challenge.

    "His (Brooks') emergency motion to stay his execution comes too late in the litigation day," Watkins wrote.

    Watkins in November had allowed Brooks to intervene in a group of consolidated cases called the "Midazolam Litigation" brought by five other death row inmates challenging Alabama's new three-drug lethal injection combination as cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In 2014 Alabama changed the drugs it will use for executions after two drugs became unavailable for purchase from pharmaceutical companies unwilling to supply them for executions.

    "Naturally, Brooks wants in the game, and he is of late on the roster. Indeed, the pendency of that final hearing in April 2016 has been identified as a reason to stay his execution," Watkins wrote in his order.

    Alabama has not yet used the new drug combination. The last death row inmate executed was in 2013.

    Watkins also wrote that Brooks' did not meet the requirement for suggesting alternate execution methods.

    Based on U.S. Supreme Court rulings, in order to prevail on method-of-execution claims of cruel and unusual punishment, inmates must also name an alternative form of execution that is feasible, readily implemented, and significantly reduces a substantial risk of severe pain.

    Court filings on behalf of five death row inmates had suggested a single dose of pentobarbital, a single dose of sodium thiopental, or the single larger dose of midazolam.

    The Attorney General's office, which has said it can't get new supplies of pentobarbital and thiopental, agreed to use a single larger dose of midazolam just for the execution of those five inmates in order to get the lawsuits dismissed.

    But the AG's office contended in court filings that its new three-drug protocol using midazolam as the first drug in the series is still constitutional. Rocuronium Bromide, a drug used to stop breathing, and potassium chloride, the drug used to stop the heart, are the two other drugs in the new protocol.

    Two other inmates, in order to satisfy the requirement they suggest a viable alternate execution method, proposed firing squad or hanging.

    Watkins rejected the firing squad, hanging, and the single-dose of midazolam which Brooks' also had proposed.

    No matter what alternatives the inmates suggest, Watkins wrote, execution appears inevitable.

    "Condemned inmates, including Brooks, have taken to referring to this alternative pleading requirement as the 'suicide burden,' an implicit acknowledgement of their understanding that Glossip (the U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring alternatives) finalizes the inevitability of execution, and that the inmate is required to plead his challenge into a pleading corner from which there is no escape," Watkins wrote. "Brooks pleaded an alternative that is part of the present protocol, which means his inevitable execution will be either with three drugs beginning with midazolam, or with midazolam alone, which undermines his arguments about the three-drug protocol."

    The Alabama Attorney General's Office has argued that while the other death row inmates had filed their lawsuits contesting the lethal injection combination about a year ago, Brooks didn't ask to intervene in the other inmates' suits until November in an apparent effort to delay his execution.

    Brooks was convicted in 1993 of murder during the course of a rape, robbery, and burglary for killing Jo Deann Campbell at the Ski Lodge Apartments in Homewood. A jury recommended Brooks receive the death penalty and a judge sentenced him to death.

    When he was sentenced Brooks bellowed at the victim's family that it "ain't over yet" before storming into the prisoners' passageway leading to the Jefferson County Jail.

    Brooks and Campbell, 23, met in 1991 when they worked at different summer camps on a lake in New York, where Brooks and his parents then lived.

    Brooks and a friend, Robert Leeper, came to Homewood on Dec. 30, 1992, to visit Campbell and stay the night.

    The next evening, police found Campbell's body stuffed under her bed, her badly beaten head wrapped in her sweat pants. Police testified they found one of Brooks' palm prints on Campbell's ankle and his thumbprint in her blood on her bedroom doorknob. A state forensic scientist testified that DNA tests matched semen from Campbell's body to Brooks.

    Police arrested Brooks and Leeper in Columbus, Ga., on charges that they bought beer, soda, gas and other items the day before with Campbell's credit card.

    Leeper was charged but not indicted in the murder. Leeper denied any knowledge of Campbell's murder and forensic evidence did not link him to the crime prosecutors said. Leeper was sentenced to 5 years after pleading guilty to credit card theft and was released on probation with time served awaiting trial in jail.

    http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/in...lt_alabam.html
    "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

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    Alabama inmate asks appeals court to halt execution

    An Alabama inmate is asking the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to halt his execution, which is scheduled for Jan 21.

    An attorney for Christopher Brooks filed the notice of appeal Monday. A federal judge earlier this month denied his emergency motion for a stay of execution.

    Brooks has said his execution should be postponed until a court decides the constitutionality of the state's new lethal injection drug combination.

    He joined five other death row inmates in a lawsuit challenging the use of midazolam as a sedative in Alabama's three-drug lethal injection process.

    Brooks is scheduled to be put to death Jan. 21 for the rape and bludgeoning death of Deann Campbell more than 20 years ago. The execution would be Alabama's first in more than two years.

    http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/...tion/78015604/
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  4. #14
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    Death row inmate seeks postponement of execution; Sister of victim speaks out

    After spending more than two decades on Alabama's death row, Christopher Brooks is asking the court to postpone his execution. Brooks was convicted for raping and murdering JoDeann Campbell in her Homewood apartment on New Year’s Eve in 1992.

    Brooks’ execution is scheduled for January 21, 2016. His lawyers filed a request Tuesday to delay the execution to allow him to participate in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the lethal injection drugs.

    According to court documents, the lethal injection drugs allegedly paralyze muscles allowing for a “painful death by asphyxiation.” The drugs will also cause “a burning sensation as it travels through the body destroying the internal organs.” The lawyers say these physical effects violate the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment.

    JoDeann’s older sister, Corinne Campbell, learned of Brooks’ request for a postponement on Tuesday. “That’s his right,” Corinne said. “The justice system is set up the way that it is, and he has a right to do so. Again, my focus is on my sister and not on him so much.”

    Corinne remembers JoDeann as bubbly, outgoing, and full of life. Corinne treasures the photos of the last time she saw JoDeann on Christmas Day in 1992. She saves the festive yellow blouse JoDeann wore that day in her closet.

    After waiting two decades for Brooks’ sentence to be carried out, Corinne maintains faith in the justice system. “I didn’t decide his fate. A jury did that. So whatever happens, happens,” she said.

    Only two days shy of the twenty-third anniversary of her sister’s murder, Corinne says she is not angry. “Yes, I do wish she was still here and had an opportunity to live a full life. But I do know that the years that she did have had a positive effect on everyone she was around. You know, I’m proud of that,” she said.

    A lawyer for Christopher Brooks expects the federal appellate court to rule on his request for a stay before the January 21 execution date.

    If the execution moves forward as scheduled, Corinne says she plans to attend.

    http://www.wbrc.com/story/30849983/d...tim-speaks-out
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  5. #15
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    U.S. Appeals Court to expedite ruling in death penalty litigation

    The United States Court of Appeals is scheduled to rule quickly on the latest filing in an ongoing stream of appeals, motions and decisions regarding the "Midazolam Litigation" — a lawsuit that challenges the constitutionality of Alabama's death penalty protocol.

    Christopher Brooks, a death row inmate and plaintiff in the litigation, filed the most recent appeal which challenges U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins' decision to deny Brooks' emergency stay of execution.

    Normally, the higher court would have 40 days to decide on the appeal. But Brooks is scheduled to be executed on Jan. 21 and the appeal was filed Dec. 28, so the court said it would issue a decision on Jan. 8.

    Litigation leading up to this point:

    Brooks was found guilty of raping and bludgeoning of Deann Campbell to death in 1993 when Alabama's method of execution was still the electric chair.

    He was sentenced to death, and spent the next 10 years appealing his conviction. Virtually all appellate routes have been exhausted with the exception of a petition for clemency from Governor Robert Bentley.

    In 2011, death row inmate Tommy Arthur filed a suit challenging the constitutionality of Alabama's death penalty protocol. He argued that both the drugs and the methods used would constitute cruel and unusual punishment.

    A final hearing in Arthur's suit is scheduled for Jan. 12 - nine days before Brooks is to be executed.

    In 2012, five other death row inmates filed a separate law suit which also challenges the constitutionality of Alabama's method of execution. Litigation in that case halted for nearly two years while the United States Supreme Court heard arguments that debated whether using the drug midazolam in a three drug lethal injection protocol was constitutional.

    Alabama had revised its execution protocol to include midazolam in 2014, but had not yet executed anyone under this new protocol. Consequently, executions in the state also halted until June 2015 when SCOTUS ruled that midazolam couldn't be proved unconstitutional.

    Three months after the Supreme Court made its decision, the State asked the Alabama Supreme Court to set an execution date for Brooks.

    Forty days after that, Brooks asked to join the "Midazolam Litigation" as a plaintiff, which was granted.

    Shortly after, Brooks' execution date was set for Jan. 21, but the final hearing for the suit in which he is a plaintiff isn't scheduled until April.

    On Dec. 4, Brooks requested that his execution be delayed, in part because of the pending litigation to which he is now a party.

    Watkins denied that request, stating in his order that, “Naturally, Brooks wants in the game, and he is of late on the roster.” Watkins also noted that Brooks could potentially reap any benefits of Tommy Arthur's final hearing because it's scheduled for nine days before Brooks' execution and also addresses the constitutionality of the death penalty.

    In response, Brooks has asked the United States Court of Appeals to overrule Watkins' decision.

    http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/...tion/78089262/
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  6. #16
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Alabama Death Row inmate tells appeals court why it should stop his execution

    Attorneys for Alabama Death Row inmate Christopher Brooks, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection in less than three weeks, filed a brief Monday telling the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals why it should stop his execution.

    Brooks is scheduled to be executed Jan. 21. It would be the first Alabama execution since July 2013 and the first use of the state's new three-drug lethal injection protocol.

    An attorney for Brooks filed a notice of appeal to the 11th Circuit on Dec. 28 after U.S. District Court Judge Keith Watkins declined to stop the execution. The appeals court gave Brooks until 4 p.m. today to file a brief explaining why it should block the execution.

    Brooks in November joined a lawsuit by five other death row inmates challenging the state's new three-drug protocol as being a violation of the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The lawsuit is specifically aimed at the first drug to be administered – midazolam – this is to sedate the inmates before the other two drugs aimed at stopping the breathing and the heart are given.

    A hearing has been set for April in that lawsuit and Brooks argues that his execution should be delayed until after the issue is resolved.

    "Brooks is an intervening plaintiff in the litigation that is scheduled to go to a hearing on the merits in April," according to today's 40-page brief. "Without a stay of execution, he will be put to death using a constitutionally suspect method of execution that has never been used in Alabama, and before any court will adjudicate the constitutionality of this method of execution."

    The brief asks the 11th Circuit to vacate the district court's order denying Brook's motion for a stay of execution and stay his execution, or, in the alternative, remand the case for an evidentiary hearing on the feasibility of the alternative methods of execution Brooks alleged in his complaint.

    One of Brooks' attorneys, John Palombi, Assistant Federal Defender for the Federal Defenders Office of the Middle District of Alabama, issued a statement after filing today's brief.

    "The United States Supreme Court deals with challenges to methods of execution based on a belief that the States have, over time, taken steps to ensure that methods of execution become more and more humane," Palombi stated. "The District Court's opinion in this case takes a step back and has the potential to reward states that take no efforts to make their method of execution more humane. It allows the Alabama Department of Corrections to control the meaning of the Eighth Amendment in Alabama merely by what efforts they choose to take to obtain drugs that would allow for a more humane execution."

    "This will encourage states to look for the easiest way to carry out the most solemn duty that a State can undertake," Palombi stated, citing part of the brief. "The most used method of execution in the last two years in the United States is a single dose of pentobarbital. This indicates that it is feasible for the Alabama Department of Corrections to obtain pentobarbital, and this case should not be decided merely on their declaration that they cannot get it."

    Alabama has stated that it can no longer get pentobarbital.

    Lawyers for the Alabama Attorney General's Office, which represents the state, have until Friday to respond to Brooks' brief.

    Brooks was convicted in 1993 of murder during the course of a rape, robbery, and burglary for killing Jo Deann Campbell at the Ski Lodge Apartments in Homewood. A jury recommended Brooks receive the death penalty and a judge sentenced him to death.

    Brooks and Campbell, 23, met in 1991 when they worked at different summer camps on a lake in New York, where Brooks and his parents then lived.

    Brooks and a friend, Robert Leeper, came to Homewood on Dec. 30, 1992, to visit Campbell and stay the night.

    The next evening, police found Campbell's body stuffed under her bed, her badly beaten head wrapped in her sweat pants. Police testified they found one of Brooks' palm prints on Campbell's ankle and his thumbprint in her blood on her bedroom doorknob. A state forensic scientist testified that DNA tests matched semen from Campbell's body to Brooks.

    Police arrested Brooks and Leeper in Columbus, Ga., on charges that they bought beer, soda, gas and other items the day before with Campbell's credit card.

    Leeper was sentenced to 5 years after pleading guilty to credit card theft and was released on probation with time served awaiting trial in jail. Leeper denied any knowledge of Campbell's murder and forensic evidence did not link him to the crime, prosecutors said.

    http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/in...mate_says.html
    "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

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    As a nurse, the difference between rocuronium bromide and vecruonium bromide is identical. Those of you in Alabama should have no shame in adopting the protocol of Florida.

  8. #18
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Alabama Inmate Seeks Stay Of Execution Following U.S. Supreme Court Ruling

    WASHINGTON — Just six days before his scheduled execution, the lawyer for Christopher Brooks has asked the Alabama Supreme Court to put Brooks’s execution on hold so the court can assess whether its capital sentencing laws remain constitutional following this week’s U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down Florida’s capital sentencing scheme.

    Alabama, like Florida, places the final decision of whether to impose death on the judge — not a jury. On Jan. 12, the U.S. Supreme Court held that “Florida’s sentencing scheme, which required the judge alone to find the existence of an aggravating circumstance, is therefore unconstitutional.”

    Since that ruling, Alabama officials have defended their state’s law as having been previously upheld as constitutional and as being distinguishable from the part of the Florida law struck down this week. Criminal defense attorneys have said otherwise, and now — in Brooks’s case — one of those lawyers is asking the Alabama Supreme Court to step in.

    “Mr. Brooks’ death sentence might be unconstitutional under Hurst v. Florida and, if it is unconstitutional, he is entitled to relief,” the lawyer for Brooks wrote, referring to this week’s decision. “Mr. Brooks’ death sentence should not be carried out while critical questions concerning the constitutionality of Alabama’s capital sentencing scheme remain unanswered.”

    Brooks was sentenced to death in 1993 for the 1992 murder of Jo Deann Campbell, a sentence imposed by Judge James Hard. The jury had recommended a death sentence to the judge on an 11-1 vote.


    “Mr. Brooks respectfully requests that this Court temporarily stay his execution currently scheduled for January 21, 2016, direct the parties to present briefs on the applicability of Hurst, and undertake a thorough consideration of Hurst’s impact on Alabama’s capital sentencing scheme,” attorney Leslie S. Smith, from the Federal Defenders’ Office in the Middle District of Alabama, wrote in the petition to the Alabama Supreme Court.


    After detailing at length the comparisons between the Florida and Alabama death sentencing laws, the Friday filing for Brooks cites to a friend-of-the-court brief filed by Alabama’s own lawyers in the Florida case, stating that the arguments made by the state there showed it “recognized that the Supreme Court’s rejection of Florida’s sentencing scheme … would mean that Alabama’s nearly identical scheme would almost certainly fail to meet constitutional standards.”

    Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange’s office, however, maintains that the state’s death sentencing statute — which only requires the judge to give “consideration” to the jury’s sentencing recommendation — remains constitutional.






    More than 20 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Alabama’s death sentencing scheme in a case brought by Louise Harris in which she questioned whether the state’s law violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments.

    “The Constitution permits the trial judge, acting alone, to impose a capital sentence,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote for the court. “It is thus not offended when a State further requires the sentencing judge to consider a jury’s recommendation and trusts the judge to give it the proper weight.”

    Since that time, however, an entire area of caselaw has developed at the Supreme Court regarding the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a jury trial. A 1999 decision noted that the court has “suggest[ed]” that “any fact (other than prior conviction) that increases the maximum penalty for a crime must be charged in an indictment, submitted to a jury, and proven beyond a reasonable doubt.” In the landmark Apprendi v. New Jersey case in 2000, that principle was made law.


    Two years later, in Ring v. Arizona, the court expanded that reasoning to the capital sentencing realm. Overturning a prior decision of the Supreme Court holding Arizona’s death sentencing scheme to be constitutional, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the court, “Capital defendants, no less than non-capital defendants, we conclude, are entitled to a jury determination of any fact on which the legislature conditions an increase in their maximum punishment.”

    On Tuesday, the Supreme Court responded to any perceived ambiguity in Ring, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing for the court: “The Sixth Amendment requires a jury, not a judge, to find each fact necessary to impose a sentence of death. A jury’s mere recommendation is not enough.”

    Nonetheless, on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange told BuzzFeed News that the “ruling regarding the Florida death penalty does not affect Alabama’s law” — relying in part upon the Eighth Amendment-based decision from 1995 in explaining why that was so.

    “The U.S. Supreme Court specifically upheld Alabama’s current system as constitutional in the case of Harris v. Alabama in 1995,” spokesperson Joy Patterson wrote. She also pointed to other cases to buttress her point — three of which were cases from recent years in which the Supreme Court declined to hear challenges to the Alabama system, which is not a decision on the merits of the issue. The other two were lower court decisions addressing the Alabama law that were handed down before the Supreme Court even accepted the Florida case.

    Patterson also attempted to distinguish Alabama’s system from the parts of the system held to be unconstitutional in Florida.


    “In the Florida case, the holding is that a jury must find the aggravating factor in order to make someone eligible for the death penalty. Alabama’s system already requires the jury to do just that,” she stated. “The jury must unanimously find an aggravating factor at either the guilt or sentencing phase—such as when the murder was committed during a robbery, a rape, or a kidnapping.”

    In response, attorney John Palombi — also from the Federal Defenders’ Office in the Middle District of Alabama — told BuzzFeed News on Friday night, “That is the same argument that Florida made in the Supreme Court and was rejected. In Alabama, just like in Florida, there is no death sentence until the judge makes the finding of the aggravating circumstance.”


    As Brooks’s lawyer put it in the Friday filing, “As with Timothy Hurst, in the absence of the trial court’s fact-findings and imposition of sentence, Christopher Brooks would not have received a death sentence.”

    http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner...me#.qwqj9r9O7k
    "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

  9. #19
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    Sisters remember Homewood victim as convicted killer nears execution

    Twenty-three years after her brutal death, and with her convicted killer just four days from his execution, Jo Deann Campbell's two sisters remember her as a bubbly person who was friends with everyone she met.

    "She was a really happy-go-lucky, fun person ... always smiling," said her oldest sister, Corinne Campbell.

    Jo Deann, a graduate of Leeds High School who also attended Jefferson State Community College, was working as a training manager at Chili's on U.S. 280 in December 1992. She wanted to travel to other restaurants in the chain around the country to train others, said Corinne Campbell, who lives in Vestavia.

    Jo Deann, 23 when she died, had also worked the two previous summers as a counselor and tennis instructor at a camp on a lake in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York.

    Jo Deann, who loved to travel and the outdoors, would often write camp counselors and kids she had met at the camp, her sisters said.

    Her sister Fran Romano said she had lived with Jo Deann during part of that period and remembers Jo Deann working two jobs and not getting back until late at night.

    "I'd wake up the next day and there would be five or six letters she had written to kids or counselors," said Romano, who resides in Guntersville.

    Jo Deann would sometimes suggest that if any of the kids or counselors were ever in the Birmingham area, they should stop in and see her.

    Her sisters say they don't know if Jo Deann had ever written or extended that invitation to Christopher Eugene Brooks, a man she had met and dated her first summer at the camp in 1991. Brooks had worked at another camp on the same lake.

    But Jo Deann obviously wasn't expecting Brooks to show up at Chili's on Dec. 30, 1992.

    "People at Chili's said she was totally caught off guard," Romano said.

    A friend would later testify that, in a phone conversation with Jo Deann that same night, Jo Deann mentioned a friend would be sleeping on the living room floor of her Homewood apartment.

    Brooks, who had moved to Columbus, Ga., also had brought his friend and roommate, Robert Patrick Leeper.

    "She was pretty trusting, I guess, and she allowed them to stay," Corinne Campbell said.

    The next day, Dec. 31, 1992, after Jo Deann didn't show up for work, her co-workers and family became concerned. Later that day, Jo Deann's parents went to her apartment at the Ski Lodge 1 complex with Homewood police.

    Jo Deann's body was found under her bed. She had been bludgeoned to death, by what was believed to be a barbell, and was naked from the waist down.

    Police quickly linked Brooks to the crime through forensic and other evidence, according to court records and trial testimony. A bloody fingerprint matching Brooks was found on a doorknob in Jo Deann's bedroom, as were two other fingerprints. A palm print matching Brooks was found on Jo Deann's left ankle. And Brooks' thumbprints were found on a note in the apartment.

    An expert would later testify DNA found in semen on Jo Deann was a statistical match to Brooks, with the odds of finding another person with the same DNA being 69,349,000 to 1.

    Brooks also was seen driving Jo Deann's 1988 Volkswagen Fox, which was found at his apartment complex in Columbus. A package in the car was addressed to Brooks.

    When he was arrested, Brooks also had Jo Deann's car keys and her Shell Oil Company credit card, which he had used, according to court documents. He also had cashed her paycheck and one of her personal checks. Several items of Jo Deann's also had been pawned at shops around Columbus, according to the court records.

    Police also testified to finding Jo Deann's answering machine hooked up inside Brooks' apartment. Her message wishing "Happy holidays" to callers was still on the tape, which had been flipped over to record a message for Brooks' and Leeper's incoming calls.

    Death sentence

    Brooks was convicted by a jury at his 1993 trial. The jury recommended 11 to 1 that he be sentenced to death. The judge agreed and sentenced Brooks to die.

    Leeper, who also had been charged initially with Jo Deann's murder, was freed after pleading guilty to a charge of using Jo Deann's credit card and given a sentence of time served. He had denied any knowledge of the murder, no forensic evidence linked him to it, and he passed a lie detector test.

    Leeper had said Brooks told him Jo Deann had let them borrow her car and her credit card.

    Brooks denied killing Jo Deann and, after he was sentenced to death, he turned toward Jo Deann's family and yelled, "Ain't over yet," as he was led away.

    "It was just a smirk," Romano said. "That made me so upset."

    Romano said she believed the outburst was aimed at their dad, Joe Campbell.

    Jo Deann's murder had devastated their father, Romano said.

    "My dad was the kindest, most gentle person I've ever known. ... That broke him. That hurt him so bad," she said.

    Joe Campbell, who died in 1997, was the first inductee in the Alabama Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Fame in 1999. He was a former professional baseball player in the Brooklyn Dodgers farm system and later a scout for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He served as a coach in Jefferson County Schools for 27 years.

    Scheduled execution


    After years of appeals, Brooks is scheduled to be put to death at 6 p.m. Thursday by lethal injection at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. It would be Alabama's first execution since 2013.

    As of Friday, Brooks was still awaiting word from the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on his request for an emergency stay of execution. He argues he should be given a chance to have his execution delayed, at least until lawsuits by he and other inmates challenging Alabama's new three-drug lethal injection protocol have been decided.

    Other last-minute appeals also could occur, including one to Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley.

    Romano and Corrine Campbell said they and their mother, who lives in Leeds, will travel to Atmore, but have not decided whether to witness the execution.

    "I've been very nervous about it ... It's not anything any of us are looking forward to," Romano said. "We just didn't want Jo Deann's name to be forgotten."

    The sisters also were reluctant to talk about their views on the death penalty.

    "I have gone through torn feelings," Corinne Campbell said. "Nothing is going to bring her back. It's very tough."

    "My sister had integrity and character, which our parents worked diligently to instill in each of us," she continued. "She was the kind of person who easily made friends because she was one. She would go out of her way to make people smile and had a dynamic personality.

    "Jo Deann was generous, kind-hearted, trustworthy, optimistic, and energetic. She absolutely lit up a room. ...

    "She would tell us (family and friends) to not worry about her because she is with the Good Lord and our dad in heaven. Additionally, she would work to make us smile in such a grievous situation. Her joyous bubbly personality and lively smile is missed incredibly by those who knew her."

    http://www.cncpunishment.com/forums/...bell#post88586
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

  10. #20
    Administrator Aaron's Avatar
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    Is this one going to go ahead or will it get stayed because of the pending court case about their protocol

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