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Thread: Gregory Hunt - Alabama Death Row

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    Administrator Michael's Avatar
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    Gregory Hunt - Alabama Death Row




    Summary of Offense:

    Sentenced to death in 1990 for the 1988 beating death of a former girlfriend, Karen Lane, in Parrish. Hunt was accused of torching her house, going to an apartment where she was staying, sexually assaulting and fatally beating her.

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On June 21, 2006, Hunt filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/ala...v01209/112768/

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    GREGORY HUNT vs COMMISSIONER, ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS

    No. 09-15310.
    United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

    January 5, 2012.

    Before DUBINA, Chief Judge, and TJOFLAT and WILSON, Circuit Judges.

    Gregory Hunt is a death-row inmate in the Alabama prison system as a result of his conviction for capital murder on June 19, 1990. Hunt seeks a writ of habeas corpus on the ground that he received ineffective assistance of counsel in violation of the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. To obtain the writ, Hunt must establish that the decision of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals rejecting his claims "was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States," or "was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the evidence presented in the State court proceeding." 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). The district court, concluding that Hunt had established neither point, denied the writ. After reviewing the record and considering the parties' arguments, we affirm.

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    Administrator Heidi's Avatar
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    In today's United States Supreme Court orders, Hunt's petition for writ of certiorari was DENIED.

    Execution date could follow.
    An uninformed opponent is a dangerous opponent.

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

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    "[Walker County District Attorney Bill] Adair said the victim’s mother has died since Hunt was sentenced and her father is in failing health. Adair said her father has expressed fear that he may not live long enough to see justice for his daughter.

    “What do you say to that? It’s just heartbreaking,” Adair said. “He’s a wonderful man who has gone through terrible loss and needs it to be concluded before he passes away. It is inconceivable that justice has still not been served for this victim.” "

    http://www.mountaineagle.com/view/fu...atest_articles

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    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    I hope they carry out his death sentence while the father of the victim is still alive. It seems so unfair that he is still waiting for justice.

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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    State adopts new execution drugs, seeks death date for 9 inmates

    MONTGOMERY — Alabama this week adopted a new drug protocol for executions by lethal injection and began seeking execution dates for nine inmates on death row.

    Those inmates saw their execution dates indefinitely postponed earlier this year, when state officials ran out of drugs used in executions.

    Several states have faced shortages of those drugs in recent years, largely because drug manufacturers in Europe — where there's substantial opposition to capital punishment — have refused to sell drugs to states for use in executions. In response to the shortage, several states have sought out new combinations of lethal injection drugs.

    Some death-row inmates have filed suits arguing that the use of those experimental drug combinations could lead to pain during executions, violating the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

    Tommy Arthur is one of those inmates. Arthur, sentenced to death for the murder-for-hire of a Muscle Shoals man in the 1980s, was originally scheduled for lethal injection in 2012. He filed suit on the grounds that the state had only recently switched to a new lethal injection drug, pentobarbital. Two other Alabama inmates have similar suits pending.

    State officials acknowledged in March that Alabama no longer had a supply of pentobarbital — leaving Alabama without the drugs it needed to carry out executions.

    In motions filed Thursday with the Alabama Supreme Court, state officials say they now have a new drug protocol for executions. Under the protocol, adopted Wednesday, inmates would be injected with midazolam hydrochloride, an anesthetic; rocuronium bromide to relax the muscles; and potassium chloride to induce cardiac arrest.

    The drug combination is "virtually identical to Florida's newly-revised protocol which has been ruled constitutional," according to the state's motion.

    The protocol has been used for seven executions in Florida, the motion states.

    Midazolam, the first drug in the protocol, has been used in botched executions in other states this year. An Ohio execution in January took 25 minutes, with the inmate gasping for breath, according to accounts in the press. In May, an Oklahoma inmate died 43 minutes after first being lethally injected. Both executions used midazolam.

    Florida’s recent executions haven’t presented the same problems, said Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group which studies the death penalty.

    Still, Dieter said, problems might be harder to spot under Florida’s drug protocol because the second drug in the sequence paralyzes the inmate.

    “It’s hard to tell when a paralytic is the second drug,” Dieter said. “They could be conscious or experiencing pain, but they can’t show that.”

    The state filed nine motions seeking execution dates for Arthur as well as inmates David Lee Roberts, Anthony Boyd, Christopher Eugene Brooks, Demetrius Frazier, Gregory Hunt, William Ernest Kuenzel, Robin Dee Myers and Christopher Lee Price.

    The motion in Arthur's case was the first to come to light Friday morning. The Star's attempts to reach Arthur's lawyer, Suhana Han, were not immediately successful Friday morning.

    Jennifer Ardis, a spokeswoman for Gov. Robert Bentley, said the state was ready to carry out the executions.

    "Obviously, the decision to execute an inmate is a serious one, and the governor supports the legal process," Ardis said. "We have a new protocol and the Department of Corrections is ready to carry out an execution order."

    One Alabama death penalty opponent said she didn’t understand the drive to resume executions.

    “I’m disgusted,” said Esther Brown, an activist for Project Hope for Abolition of the Death Penalty. “I’m disgusted with our compulsion, our need, to kill. I just don’t understand it.”

    The state hasn’t executed an inmate since July 2013, when Andrew Reid Lackey died by lethal injection for the 2005 murder of an Athens man.

    http://www.annistonstar.com/news/art...1c5521f3f.html

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    Alabama executions on hold until U.S. Supreme Court decision

    By Tim Lockette
    The Anniston Star

    MONTGOMERY — Executions in Alabama are on hold until the U.S. Supreme Court decides a case regarding the drugs Oklahoma is using to kill condemned inmates, according to a series of orders filed Wednesday by a federal judge.

    "The State has conceded that the best course of action is to stay decisions in lethal injection cases across the board" until the Oklahoma case is decided, U.S. District Judge W. Keith Watkins wrote in a court order Wednesday.

    Watkins issued orders this week in at least two death penalty cases, stating that executions in those cases are stayed until the nation's highest court rules on the use of midazolam as a lethal injection drug. Watkins' orders indicate that Alabama will not oppose any motion for a stay of execution until the Supreme Court issues a ruling.

    In September, Alabama sought execution dates for nine inmates. After a long struggle to find drugs for use in lethal injection — something made difficult by drug companies' reluctance to sell the drugs — Alabama settled on a new lethal injection protocol that relies on midazolam as a painkiller. In a September court filing, the Alabama attorney general's office declared the state had enough drugs on hand to conduct those executions.

    Midazolam was also used in a botched execution in Oklahoma last year, in which inmate Clayton Lockett reportedly writhed on a gurney for 43 minutes before dying. Another Oklahoma inmate, Richard Glossip, filed suit arguing that execution with midazolam violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment. The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear Glossip's case in April, with a decision likely by June.

    Several Alabama inmates have similar challenges pending. In at least two Alabama cases — those of Thomas Arthur and Anthony Boyd — the court stayed all action in those cases and directed that the inmates refile their suits after the Glossip case is decided.

    Arthur, imprisoned for the murder-for-hire of a Muscle Shoals man, was scheduled for a Feb. 19 execution, but his death was already under a stay. Courts had also already stayed an execution for William Kuenzel, who was originally scheduled to die March 19.

    According to Watkins' order, the Alabama Supreme Court earlier this month had set an April 16 execution date for inmate Gregory Hunt and a June 18 execution date for Robin Dee Myers.

    Federal public defender John Palombi, attorney for Hunt and Myers, said the execution of both men is now stayed.

    "Everything seems to be on hold now, pending a decision on Glossip," Palombi said.

    Attempts to reach Mike Lewis, spokesman for the Alabama attorney general's office, were not immediately successful Thursday.

    http://www.annistonstar.com/news/ala...c61134f53.html

  9. #9
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Judge denies offer to use sedative as means of execution

    A federal judge says the state of Alabama may not use a large dose of a sedative to execute five death row inmates.

    U.S. District Judge William Keith Watkins issued an order Thursday denying the state's requests to dismiss lawsuits from five inmates who have challenged Alabama's three-drug lethal injection procedure. The inmates were asked to present alternative means of execution and among other things suggested single doses of midazolam in amended complaints.

    The Alabama Attorney General's office said in a motion that an alternative option to dismissing the lawsuits would be allowing the Department of Corrections to use midazolam to execute the inmates.

    Judge Watkins denied the state's motion and ordered the inmates' lawsuits to be combined. A status conference for the combined case is scheduled for Nov. 4.

    Alabama has not conducted an execution since July 25, 2013, due to drug shortages and ongoing legal challenges. Hospira, under pressure from anti-death penalty activists, stopped manufacturing sodium thiopental, a sedative widely used in executions, in 2011. Alabama switched to pentobarbital as the sedative in its three-drug procedure, but said last year its supplies of the drug had run out.

    The state adopted a new execution protocol in September 2014. Inmates would first be administered 500 milligrams of midazolam, a sedative; then 600 milligrams of rocuronium bromide, a paralyzing drug and then 240 "milliequivalents" of potassium chloride, to stop the heart. The protocol is based on one used in Florida.

    Oklahoma death row inmates challenged a similar protocol used in that state. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected their challenge in a 5-4 ruling in June. Among other findings, the majority ruled that inmates challenging a method of execution had to suggest an alternative one. The five inmates -- Demetrius Frazier, Carey Dale Grayson, David Lee Roberts, Robin Dion Myers and Gregory Hunt, suggested the single dose of midazolam, or the use of sodium thiopental or pentobarbital. In their motions, the inmates cited testimony by a witness for the state of Oklahoma in the Glossip case who suggested a single dose of midazolam would be enough for an execution.

    “Defendants are not justified in using a three-drug protocol containing midazolam when, according to their expert, a single dose of midazolam would cause death without any of the attendant risk involved with using a paralytic or potassium chloride,” the filings stated.

    Attorneys for the state argued that the inmates’ pursuit of a single dose of midazolam was an admission of the safety of the procedure. But it suggested it would go forward with an execution based on midazolam, if the court so ordered.

    “Upon entry of the judgment to which the Alabama Department of Corrections hereby consents, the Department will suspend the current lethal injection protocol so as to forego the second and third drugs for Hunt’s execution,” the state wrote in response in Hunt’s case. “After an initial 500-milligram bolus of midazolam, the execution team will administer an additional 500-milligram dose of midazolam, if needed, until Hunt’s sentence is carried out. The Department reserves the right to administer further doses of midazolam as required.”

    Watkins rejected the state’s proposal, but did not elaborate why.

    Other challenges to the death penalty are pending. Thomas Arthur, convicted in 1982 in a murder-for-hire scheme, has challenged both the drugs used in the execution and whether Corrections officials consistently administer a consciousness test before administering the lethal drugs. Arthur suggested an alternate method to lethal injection would be firing squad. Watkins rejected that proposal this week, writing the method is "not permitted by statute and, therefore, is not a method of execution that could be considered either feasible or readily implemented by Alabama at this time."

    http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/...tion/73681650/
    "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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    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    Federal court orders new hearings in lethal injection challenge

    By Brian Lyman
    The Montgomery Advertiser

    A federal appeals court Friday ordered new hearings on a group of Alabama death row inmates' challenge to the state's execution method.

    In a 79-page opinion, a 3-judge panel of the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said there were factual disputes that should have precluded U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins from issuing summary judgment for the Alabama Department of Corrections.

    The inmates in the case argue that midazolam, a sedative used in Alabama's 3-drug execution process, cannot render a condemned individual unconscious before officials inject 2 more painful and lethal drugs. The appeals court wrote that should be the focus of future hearings.

    "Whether the ADOC's use of midazolam as the first drug in its execution protocol will render the prisoner insensate prior to the administration of the 2nd and 3rd drugs will require the presentation of expert opinion testimony," U.S. Circuit Judge Gerald Tjoflat wrote in an opinion for the panel. "We assume that Appellants' counsel is prepared to present such testimony, and that the ADOC is prepared to rebut it with expert opinion testimony of its own."

    The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2015 that condemned inmates challenging their methods of execution must present an alternative method of execution. Alabama has used midazolam since resuming executions in early 2016. 3 of the 4 that have taken place since then took place without visible incident. But Ronald Bert Smith, executed last December, gasped and coughed for 13 of the 34 minutes it took to execute him.

    Midazolam has been present in other botched executions. Critics say its ability to render a person unconscious drops when a recipient experiences a high-stress event, like his or her execution.

    The inmates in the lawsuit suggested single-injection methods of execution, involving large doses of drugs like midazolam, pentobarbital or sodium thiopental.

    The Alabama Department of Corrections argued in the case that it could not obtain supplies of sodium thiopental or pentobarbital. Hospira, the maker of sodium thiopental, stopped manufacturing it in the United States in 2011 due to its use in capital punishment. The state used pentobarbital as a sedative in executions but had exhausted its supply by 2014.

    DOC also argued that the inmates failed to show that a single large injection of midazolam would be less painful than the current method. Watkins agreed, saying the plaintiffs did not identify sources of sodium thiopental or pentobarbital and did not produce "scientific evidence of record" to prove midazolam would be less painful for the condemned.

    The appeals court found fault with Watkins' findings. It noted that dozens of executions took place involving compounded pentobarbital and that some states intended to carry out executions with it.

    "From these facts it can reasonably be inferred that compounded pentobarbital was available, that executions using the drug as a 1-drug protocol were ongoing, and that several States contemplated employing the protocol," Tjoflat wrote.

    The appeals court also noted testimony from Anne Adams Hill, general counsel for the ADOC, that she had contacted other states in the fall of 2015 - a year after the state switched to midazolam. Hill said in testimony the department wanted to weigh whether pentobarbital was available, and if so, if it might be an alternative.

    "A factfinder could reasonably infer that her efforts to find a new pentobarbital source reflected her or her superiors' doubts about midazolam's effectiveness in eliminating pain potassium chloride could cause during executions," Tjoflat wrote. "Of course, other inferences from Hill's testimony could be drawn, and that is precisely why her testimony should be submitted to the trier of fact rather than treated as conclusive on summary judgment."

    The appeals court also wrote that the lower court cited testimony from an expert witness from the plaintiffs who suggested that the midazolam dosage needed to cause death was many times higher than the 500 mg they sought. But Tjoflat also wrote that Watkins "overlooked" testimony from an expert from the DOC, who said that 500 mg on its own would be enough to cause death.

    Tjoflat's opinion told the district court to "first determine what risk the current 3-drug protocol - with midazolam as the 1st drug - presents before considering the adequacy of Appellants' proposed alternatives, especially since it has by now been clearly established that midazolam is available to the State."

    Watkins' opinion also included angry and sometimes sneering criticism of physicians, whose professional code of ethics prevent them from assisting in executions. The judge accused doctors of working "on the side of guerrilla tactics against a clearly constitutional right of the state to execute criminals convicted of vile human desecration and death" while suggesting their involvement in executions would lead to more humane methods of execution.

    The judge also attacked the U.S. Supreme Court's "evolving standards of decency" argument from 1958's Trop v. Dulles, saying it led to "hollow arguments from a debased medical community in death penalty cases."

    The 11th Circuit did not address Watkins' criticisms of the medical community Friday.

    http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/...nge/626783001/

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