Freed from death row, speaker decries capital punishment

Of all the horrors on Florida’s Death Row, one stood out: The terrifying noise of the electric chair firing up, twice a day like clockwork.

“You got to sit there and listen to that chair being tested, knowing that it was being tested in your honor,” said Shabaka WaQlimi, 62, who came within 15 hours of being executed at a state prison in Starke, Fla.

Today, WaQlimi is a free man.

After nearly 15 years on Death Row, WaQlimi’s convictions on rape and murder were set aside in 1987, after a judge determined that prosecutors blocked testimony that undercut the evidence against him.

At one point, his trip to the electric chair was postponed with less than a day to spare because a different judge found that his appeals hadn’t been exhausted in the Florida state courts, he said.

WaQlimi — or Joseph Green Brown, as he was known when he was convicted — recounted his experiences Saturday at a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People conference in Colorado Springs.

With a business suit and close-cropped, salt-and-pepper hair, he could have been confused with any other speaker at a weekend hotel convention. Instead, an audience of 30 listened in rapt attention while he spoke of the torture of knowing his death was planned “down to the second.”

When he was close to execution, he told the crowd, a tailor came to take his measurements, so that his burial suit could be prepared.

In 1979, when it looked like his protests of innocence would follow him to the grave, his brother died in a Florida hospital near the state prison, after prison officials refused his attempts to donate a kidney.

And when his long fight to prove his innocence began to gain ground, he focused on reclaiming family members who had shunned him: “It took 10 years for me and my daughter to connect,” he said.

Saturday’s talk was sponsored by Coloradans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (CADP), as part of an effort to put a human face on the 138 Death Row inmates who have been exonerated after wrongful convictions.

WaQlimi, of Charlotte, N.C., will be making four presentations in Colorado this week, some of them with Juan Melendez, a fellow Florida Death Row inmate who was also cleared of wrongdoing.

Three people are awaiting the death penalty in Colorado.

“We need to continue to educate the public until it’s looking like we’re at the point where we can actually get a repeal through the Colorado Legislature,” said CADP Executive Director Lisa Cisneros.

Source: The Gazette, Lance Benzel, April 16, 2011

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Shortage Forces Texas To Switch Execution Drug

Holding cells and execution chamber
Huntsville Unit, Texas

Texas is changing one of the drugs used to conduct executions in the nation's busiest death penalty state due to a shortage of a sedative it's used for nearly three decades, officials said Wednesday.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials said they plan to substitute pentobarbital for sodium thiopental in the three-drug cocktail used for lethal injections. Pentobarbital, a surgical sedative, also is commonly used to euthanize animals and recently has been used for executions in Oklahoma.

A shortage of sodium thiopental has forced multiple states to scramble for substitutes. Texas has used the drug since becoming the first state to do lethal injections in 1982. Texas' supply of sodium thiopental expires at the end of this month and an execution is set for early April.

Agency spokeswoman Michelle Lyons said Rick Thaler, director of the agency's institutional division, authorized the switch.

"It's in the state statute that changes in chemical and dosages may be made at the discretion of the institutional division director," she said. "We were looking for a drug with similar properties to sodium thiopental and this drug has been used in the Oklahoma execution process so there is a precedent for its use in executions."

Pentobarbital use has survived court challenges in Oklahoma, which also uses it in conjunction with two other drugs that paralyze inmates and stop their hearts. Ohio recently switched to pentobarbital as the sole drug used for its executions.

Texas' prison director has the authority to tweak the state's execution process, like changing the drug, and only a switch from lethal injection to another form of capital punishment would require legislative action in Texas. Texas used the electric chair for executions from the 1920s until the 1960s.

Texas inmate Charlie Brooks became the first in the nation to be executed by injection on Dec. 7, 1982. Texas has since executed 466 people, far more than any other state. Seventeen inmates were put to death last year in Texas and two have been executed this year.

Convicted killer Cleve Foster, who is scheduled for execution on April 5, would be the first to be given the new drug in Texas. At least four other inmates are on the state's execution schedule for the coming months. Other drugs used in the process are pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride.

The sodium thiopental shortage has delayed executions in several states and an Associated Press review found that at least five states — Arizona, Arkansas, California, Georgia and Tennessee — had to turn to England for their supply of the drug. Nebraska, meanwhile, secured a stockpile from an Indian firm. On Tuesday, Drug Enforcement Administration agents seized Georgia's supply of the sedative, saying officials had questions about how the drug was imported.

Source: AP, March 16, 2011

Texan executioners turn to Danish manufacturer Lundbeck for experimental lethal injection drug

Danish pharmaceutical manufacturer Lundbeck is set to become the primary source of lethal injection drugs for Texas, the busiest executing state in the US, after the state changed its lethal injection procedure in response to a nationwide shortage of the anaesthetic sodium thiopental.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice plans to replace thiopental with pentobarbital -- for which Lundbeck is the sole FDA-approved supplier in the USA.

Lundbeck’s response will determine the fate of scores of prisoners, not just in Texas, but across the US prison system. Texas is the leading death penalty state, and the third to change its protocol to pentobarbital, putting Lundbeck at serious risk of becoming the main go-to point for execution chambers throughout the country. Texas’s supply of sodium thiopental expires on the 31st March; the state has three executions already scheduled from April to July, for which it will be relying on Lundbeck’s Danish drugs to kill prisoners.

The use of pentobarbital in executions is experimental and considered highly dangerous because the drug, a sedative, was not designed to be used as an anaesthetic. According to Dr. David Waisel, Associate Professor of Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School: “The use of pentobarbital as an agent to induce anesthesia has no clinical history and is non-standard… the combination of significant unknowns… puts the inmate at risk of serious undue pain and suffering.”

Texas’s decision to switch drugs comes after the US Drug Enforcement Administration seized Georgia's British-sourced sodium thiopental amid increasing fears that the drug has caused excruciating pain to prisoners.

The first prisoner likely to be killed with Lundbeck drugs, Cleve Foster, was sentenced to death for a 2002 murder, despite the fact that another man had confessed to the crime. Cleve is facing execution in Texas on 5th April.

Reprieve's Director Clive Stafford Smith said: "This is the moment of truth for Lundbeck. As a supposedly ethical company, will it baulk at profiting from the killing of prisoners?”

Source: Reprieve, March 16, 2011
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Nebraska considers 1st execution since 1997

If inmate Carey Dean Moore is put to death, it would be Nebraska's 1st execution since 1997 and its first lethal injection.

Attorney General Jon Bruning said a motion was filed with the Nebraska Supreme Court on Monday, requesting that a date be set. Moore was sentenced to death for the 1979 murders of 2 Omaha cabbies.

The state's last execution occurred in 1997, when Robert Williams was electrocuted for killing three women. 11 men remain on Nebraska's death row. Besides Williams, Harold Otey and John Joubert also have been electrocuted since the state resumed executions in 1994.

Moore's attorney, Alan Peterson, did not immediately respond to a message Tuesday. Moore was convicted of 1st-degree murder for killing taxi drivers Maynard D. Helgeland and Reuel Eugene Van Ness in botched robberies.

Moore, 53, came within a week of being executed in 2007, but 6 days before his scheduled execution the state's high court issued a stay because it wanted to consider whether the electric chair should still be used.

Then the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled in 2008 that the electric chair amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. Since then, lawmakers approved lethal injection as the state's sole method.

For nearly 4 decades, former state Sen. Ernie Chambers, who opposed the death penalty, held up any effort to change Nebraska's method of execution because he believed the electric chair eventually would be banished by the courts. Chambers' departure from the Legislature in 2008 because of term limits made it possible for lawmakers to pass the lethal injection bill.

On Friday, the state received the 3rd drug needed to carry out an execution by lethal injection. A worldwide shortage of the drug, sodium thiopental, has made it hard to acquire, and the only U.S. manufacturer of the drug announced last week that it would stop making it.

Nebraska's lethal-injection law and the execution procedure prison officials developed were modeled on Kentucky's system because that state's death penalty withstood the scrutiny of the U.S. Supreme Court in 2008.

The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services said last summer that it had prepared a new execution chamber and trained workers to carry out the death penalty once the state obtained the sodium thiopental that will be used to render an inmate unconscious. The other drugs involved in the process are pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes an inmate's breathing, and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Nebraska's 5-page lethal injection protocol requires that 3 drugs be administered during an execution by trained corrections workers, including 2 emergency technicians who would be responsible for maintaining an open IV line.

After an execution date is set, members of the execution team who have already received training will undergo weekly refresher courses. When no execution dates are scheduled, the team trains every 6 months.

Critics of lethal injection have argued that corrections workers who don't regularly administer intravenous drugs may have trouble finding a vein. Supporters say the training requirements spelled out in the protocol - including that members of the IV teams be trained as emergency medical technicians - would alleviate that concern.

All 36 death penalty states use lethal injection, and 35 rely on the 3-drug method. But the 3-drug procedure has been questioned.

In 2009, Ohio switched to a 1-drug execution procedure after the state botched a lethal injection. Romell Broom's executioners tried unsuccessfully for 2 hours to find a usable vein for injection, painfully hitting bone and muscle in as many as 18 needle sticks before the governor halted the execution.

It was not immediately clear Tuesday how soon the Supreme Court might set an execution date for Moore.

But legal challenges to Nebraska's new execution method could still put capital punishment on hold for several years in the state.

Attorneys who oppose the death penalty have said they expect lawsuits will be filed attacking various components of the new lethal injection protocol, including training requirements they say are vague. The law is also expected to be challenged under federal civil-rights law.

Source: Associated Press, January 26, 2011

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Drug shortage could delay executions in Florida

Florida's electric chair

The decision by an Illinois drug company to stop producing a drug used in Florida executions could lead to delays.

The nearly 400 men and women sitting on Florida's death row may have received a stay of execution -- at least temporarily -- from an unexpected source.

An Illinois pharmaceutical company announced Friday it will discontinue the production of a drug used in Florida lethal injections, creating far-reaching obstacles -- and delays -- for the state's backed-up execution system, experts say.

With a four-paragraph statement on its website Friday announcing it would "exit the sodium thiopental market,'' Hospira Inc. changed how convicted felons would be put to death across the nation, including here in Florida.

Sodium thiopental, an anesthetic, is 1 of the 3 drugs used by the state during lethal injections. Hospira was the only U.S. maker of the anesthetic.

When reserves of the drug are exhausted, Florida will need to find an alternative method, and opponents of capital punishment are already sensing an opening.

"The state could change the procedure tomorrow, but it would likely be challenged,'' said Mark Elliott, Executive Director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty. "That's the reason they haven't changed the [3-drug] procedure yet.''

Efforts to reach representatives from Gov. Rick Scott's office for comment were unsuccessful Saturday.

While it is not clear what step the state will take next, it has several options. Florida could find alternatives to sodium thiopental in the international market. It could scrap the 3-drug cocktail altogether for a 1-drug method.

And one other, long-shot option exists: Florida could return to the primary use of the electric chair, which is still a possibility left open to condemned inmates.

"It will affect different states differently,'' said Richard Dieter, an anti-death penalty advocate based out of Washington. "I don't think anybody's going back to hangings. They're going to have to recalculate things.''

Lethal injection has been the state's preferred method since 2000, when the Florida Legislature changed the law.

But issues remain. The state's lethal injection practices have been scrutinized since Angel Diaz's botched execution in December 2006, a procedure that took 34 minutes when the needles went straight through his veins.

That prompted a death-penalty moratorium in Florida; then-Gov. Jeb Bush called for an investigation. Changes in the state's lethal injection protocol were made, and former Gov. Charlie Crist began signing death warrants again in July 2007.

The next spring, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection, the nation's leading method of execution, in a 7-2 ruling.

Still, executions in the state have been few and far between. The state has put to death just 5 convicts in the last 5 years, most recently Martin Grossman last February. Grossman, convicted of murdering Wildlife Officer Margaret "Peggy'' Park in 1984, was the 69th person executed in Florida since the death penalty was reinstated here in 1979. He was the 25th killed by lethal injection.

According to the Department of Corrections website, just 1 of the 392 men and women now on death row have an active warrant death: Robert Trease, and his sentence is under appeal.

Source: Miami Herald, January 24, 2011

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10 Infamous Cases of Wrongful Execution

There’s no doubt about it – the U.S. criminal justice system is not perfect. And those imperfections become apparent when someone is the innocent victim of the death penalty. Wrongful executions have been happening for hundreds of years, but until the advent of DNA evidence and improved forensics technology, these individuals have remained guilty as charged.


Today, DNA evidence has exonerated and released 15 death row inmates since 1992, but only eight inmates have been acknowledged of their possible innocence after execution by the Death Penalty Information Center.


Here are 10 infamous cases of wrongful execution that deserve a second look:

1. Claude Jones: Claude Jones was executed in 2000 for the murder of liquor store owner Allen Hilzendager, in San Jacinto County in 1989. On Nov. 14, 1989, Jones and another man were seen pulling into a liquor store in Point Blank, Texas. One stayed in the car while the other went inside and shot the owner. Witnesses who were standing across the road couldn’t see the killer, but Jones and two other men, Kerry Dixon and Timothy Jordan, were all linked to the murder. Although Jones said he never entered the store, Dixon and Jordan testified that Jones was in fact the shooter and they were both spared the death penalty. The deciding factor and only admissible evidence in Jones’ conviction came down to a strand of hair that was found at the scene of the crime. A forensic expert testified that the hair appeared to have come from Jones, and he was sentenced to death. Forensic technology was underdeveloped during the 1990 trial and it wasn’t able to match Jones’ DNA with the hair sample. Therefore, before his 2000 execution, Jones’ attorneys filed petitions for a stay of execution with a district court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and requested that the hair be submitted for DNA testing that was now possible, but all courts and former Texas Governor George W. Bush denied Jones and he was executed. In an attempt to prove that Texas executed an innocent man, the Innocence Project and the Texas Observer filed a lawsuit in 2007 to obtain the strand of hair and submitted it for DNA testing, which was determined to be the hair of the victim.

2. Jesse Tafero: Jesse Tafero was executed by electric chair in 1990 for murdering two Florida police officers, Phillip Black and Donald Irwin. The murders occurred on Feb. 20, 1976, when Black and Irwin approached a parked car at a rest stop and found Tafero, his partner Sonia "Sunny" Jacobs, her two children and Walter Rhodes asleep inside. They were ordered to get out of the car when the officers saw a gun lying on the floor inside the car and, according to Rhodes, Tafero proceeded to shoot both officers and took off in their police car. They disposed of the police car and stole a man’s car, but were arrested after being caught in a roadblock. The gun was found in Tafero’s waistband, although it was legally registered to Jacobs. Tafero had been convicted of robbery and had served seven years of a 25-year sentence before being convicted for murder. Tafero and Jacobs claimed that Rhodes was the lone shooter, but Rhodes testified against them in exchange for a lighter sentence. Rhodes later admitted that he was responsible for the killings, but Tafero was still sentenced to death.

3. Cameron Todd Willingham: Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 for murdering his three young daughters by intentionally setting fire to the family home in Corsicana, Texas. The arson-murder case fueled much controversy about Willingham’s guilt, which was determined by the case’s primary evidence – the arson investigators’ findings. They determined that the fire was deliberately set with the help of a liquid accelerant due to specific burn patterns, laboratory tests and points of origin. Willingham maintained his innocence and appealed his conviction for years, but was executed at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville on Feb. 16, 2004. In 2009, the Texas Forensic Science Commission panel reevaluated the case and determined that state and local arson investigators used "flawed science" when they labeled the fire as arson. Although advances in fire science and arson investigations have improved since 1991, the year of the fire, experts now believe the Corsicana Fire Department was negligent in their findings. The science commission is still investigating the arson ruling, and if the judge clears Willingham, it would be the first time an official has formally declared a wrongful execution in Texas.

4. Larry Griffin: Larry Griffin was executed in 1995 for a drive-by shooting that killed 19-year-old drug dealer Quintin Moss in St. Louis. Griffin immediately became a suspect because his older brother Dennis Griffin, another well-known drug dealer, was murdered just six months earlier. Moss was believed to have killed Dennis Griffin. Although there were a number of possible suspects in the murder of Moss, a witness account by a white man named Robert Fitzgerald, who claimed to have seen the shooting, knew the license plate number of the vehicle and could identify the gunman was all it took to have Griffin arrested. Fitzgerald was a convicted felon who had a long history of run-ins with the law, which raised concerns about the legitimacy of his story. During the 1993 hearing, Fitzgerald admitted to being unsure if Griffin was the man in the car after all. There were two key witnesses who wavered and a third person whose testimony could have helped Griffin, but was never contacted by either the defense or prosecution. Griffin continued to proclaim his innocence until his execution. The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund investigated the case after Griffin’s execution and wanted to uncover more witness accounts that could support their claim that Missouri executed an innocent man.

5. Ruben Cantu: Ruben Cantu was executed in 1993 for the murder-robbery of a San Antonio man at the age of 17. Cantu had no previous convictions, but was pinpointed as a violent murderer who shot one victim nine times, as well as shot the only eyewitness nine times with a rifle, but he lived to testify. Juan Moreno offered his testimony to police and identified Cantu as the shooter, but later recanted, admitting that he said Cantu out of influence and fear of authorities. Although the case had a compelling witness testimony, there was no physical evidence that linked Cantu to the crime. In addition, his co-defendant David Garza, who allegedly committed the murder-robbery with Cantu, remained silent and signed a sworn affidavit allowing his accomplice to be falsely accused. Cantu maintained his innocence until his execution and claimed that he had been framed in this capital murder case.

6. David Spence: David Spence was executed in 1997 for murdering three teenagers in 1982 in Waco. Spence was convicted of raping, torturing and murdering two 17-year-old girls and murdering an 18-year-old boy. As the original allegations go, Spence was hired by convenience store owner Muneer Deeb to kill one girl and he ended up killing these three teens by mistake. Deeb was charged and sentenced to death, but later received a re-trial and was acquitted. Authoritative sources even had serious doubt about Spence’s guilt. Although there was no clear physical evidence to link Spence to the crime, prosecutors used bite marks that were found on one of the girl’s body and matched it to Spence’s teeth. Even jailhouse witnesses were bribed into snitching on Spence. Despite weak evidential support and jail mate testimonies, Spence was executed.

7. Carlos De Luna: Carlos De Luna was executed in 1989 for the 1983 stabbing of Wanda Lopez, a Texas convenience store clerk. There were two eyewitnesses who played a key role in the conviction of De Luna. Before the murder-robbery, George Aguirre was filling up at the gas station where the crime occurred, when he saw a man standing outside the store slide a knife with the blade exposed into his pocket and enter. The man asked Aguirre for a ride to a nightclub, but he refused and went inside the store to warn Lopez about the suspicious man. Aguirre left and Lopez called the police to describe the man. As she was on the phone with a dispatcher, the man came back into the store and robbed her. The second witness, Kevan Baker, pulled into the station and heard bangs on the station’s window and saw a man struggling with a woman. As Baker approached the gas station, the murderer threatened him and took off. When police searched the area, they found De Luna not far from the station. He was shirtless and shoeless in a puddle of water and screamed, "Don’t shoot! You got me!" Both Aguirre and Baker confirmed De Luna was the man at the station. Little to no physical evidence was collected at the crime scene, including blood samples and fingerprints that could have helped De Luna. De Luna maintained his innocence and repeated that Carlos Hernandez was the actual killer. Despite Hernandez’s trouble with the law and repeated confessions to the murder, De Luna was executed.

8. Joseph O’Dell: Joseph O’Dell was executed in 1997 for raping and murdering Helen Schartner. O’Dell was convicted on the basis of blood evidence and a jailhouse snitch. O’Dell represented himself and continued to proclaim his innocence in various unsuccessful appeals to the Virginia Supreme Court, Federal District Court and the Supreme Court. O’Dell requested that the state submit other pieces of evidence for DNA testing, but he was refused. Despite much effort and several appeals, the 4th Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld his conviction and reinstated his death sentence. After his execution, Lori Urs, an anti-death penalty advocate and former wife to O’Dell, sought to further investigate the case and exonerate O’Dell based on mistaken blood matches, court opinions and refusal of DNA testing. However, the last of the DNA evidence from O’Dell’s case was burned in March 2000 and the appeals were laid to rest.

9. Leo Jones: Leo Jones was executed in 1998 for murdering a police officer in Florida. Although Jones confessed 12 hours after the murder, he said that he was forced to say he did it during hours of intimidating police interrogation, where they threatened his life and made him play Russian roulette. One witness believed that the police department was out to get Jones because he had assaulted an officer once. The same two arresting officers were released from the department shortly after for using violence in other cases. Despite repeated appeals, other potential suspects and witness testimonies in support of Jones’ exoneration, the sentencing stood as is. Jones was also denied another method of execution and was killed by the electric chair.

10. Timothy Evans: Timothy Evans was sentenced to death by hanging for the murder of his daughter in 1949 at their home in Notting Hill, London. Evans maintained his innocence and repeatedly accused his neighbor, John Christie, of murdering his wife and daughter. The police investigation and physical evidence used to convict Evans was weak. After Evans’ trial and execution, Christie was found to be a serial killer who was responsible for murdering several women at his residence. There were massive campaigns to overturn Evans’ conviction and an official inquiry was conducted 16 years later. It was confirmed that Evans’ daughter had been killed by Christie, and Evans was granted a posthumous pardon. This case of injustice had a strong influence in the UK’s decision to abolish capital punishment.

Source: Criminal Justice Degrees Guide, December 13, 2010