Ohio executes Clarence Carter

Clarence Carter

LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) — A man was executed Tuesday for beating and stomping to death a fellow jail inmate days after the two had argued over what to watch on television.

Clarence Carter, 49, died at 10:25 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. He was the second inmate killed using the surgical sedative pentobarbital as a stand-alone execution drug.

Carter, who was waiting to be sentenced for aggravated murder in 1988 when he attacked Johnny Allen Jr., looked to see if any of Allen's family members were present. Seeing none, he still delivered an apology.

"I'd like to say I'm sorry for what I did, especially to his mother. I ask God for forgiveness and them for forgiveness," he said.

He smiled at his brother and appeared to pray as the lethal injection began. After several deep breaths, his eyes closed. He fell silent about a minute into the procedure.

Allen's mother did not attend, but released a statement saying she has no animosity against Carter and has forgiven him.

"But my forgiveness of him will never ease the pain of the loss of my son," she wrote.

Allen died two weeks after the December 1988 beating in the Hamilton County jail in Cincinnati. Investigators said Carter punched, choked, kicked and stomped on Allen for a half-hour period, periodically stopping to mop blood from his sneakers. Witnesses said Carter had punched Allen in the eye earlier in the month when one of the men changed a TV channel.

Allen was being held on a theft charge. Carter was in the jail waiting to be sentenced on a prior conviction of aggravated murder in the death of Michael Hadnot. He told the Ohio Parole Board in February that Hadnot was a fellow drug trafficker he killed over the theft of drugs, money and incriminating documents from an operation in which both were involved.

Witnessing the execution were Carter's brother, Lamarck Carter, and an attorney. They clasped hands after the execution, and Carter smiled.

Carter's lawyers argued against the execution, claiming Allen's killing was not premeditated, that Allen was a former U.S. Army soldier who likely instigated the fight and that the inmates used as witnesses were unreliable. They said Carter is borderline mentally disabled and that his upbringing was marked by violent role models, including a stepfather who beat him when he stuttered and a cousin who paid him 50 cents to fight other children.

Gov. John Kasich denied clemency last week, based on a unanimous recommendation of the parole board.

Carter had been scheduled for execution in 2007, but was spared by a lawsuit pending at the time that challenged lethal injection.

That year, the parole board had voted 6-3 against clemency, with those dissenting saying they were troubled by what appeared to be contradictory or inaccurate testimony by inmate witnesses.

Carter becomes the 3rd condemned inmate in Ohio to be put to death this year and the 44th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999.

Carter becomes the 12th condemned individual to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1246th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977

Source: AP, Rick Halperin, April 12, 2011

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Arizona executes Eric John King

Eric John King

FLORENCE, Ariz. — A man convicted of killing two people in a 1989 Phoenix convenience store robbery was executed Tuesday despite last-minute arguments by his attorneys who raised questions over one of the lethal injection drugs and said they had raised “substantial doubt” about his guilt.

Eric John King’s death at the state prison in Florence was the first execution in the state since October and one of the last expected to use a three-drug lethal injection cocktail.

The 47-year-old had maintained his innocence since his arrest and his lawyers fought until the last minute to get his sentence reversed or delayed.

Defense attorney Mike Burke said before the execution that he visited with King on Tuesday morning.

“Although he’s very calm, he continues to maintain his innocence,” Burke told The Associated Press. “He’s done what he can do. All he has left to do is maintain his dignity.”

The Arizona Supreme Court declined to stay King’s execution Monday after Burke argued that the state should wait until it enacts its new lethal injection protocol. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to intervene.

Corrections Director Charles Ryan announced Friday that Arizona will switch to using just one drug in an effort to allay any “perceived concerns” that sodium thiopental is ineffective, but only after the scheduled executions of King and Daniel Wayne Cook on April 5.

Defense attorney Michael Burke had argued that the Department of Corrections may have engaged in fraud when it imported the sedative from Great Britain by listing it on forms as being for “animals (food processing),” not humans.

Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne said the mislabeling resulted from a clerical error.

Arizona obtained the drug legally, and that’s why it has been able to avoid problems other states have had, Assistant Attorney General Kent Cattani has said. Georgia’s supply of sodium thiopental was seized by federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents on March 15 over questions about how it was obtained.

The drug is part of the three-drug lethal injection cocktail used by nearly all 34 death penalty states, but it became scarce last year after the sole U.S. manufacturer stopped making it.

Some states started obtaining sodium thiopental overseas, and lawyers have argued that potentially adulterated, counterfeit or ineffective doses could subject prisoners to extreme pain.

Texas and Oklahoma recently announced they are switching from sodium thiopental to pentobarbital in their three-drug protocol. Ohio has switched to using only pentobarbital for its executions, and Ryan said that’s the drug Arizona might start using.

Burke also was unable to successfully argue that King be granted clemency at a hearing Thursday. Burke had argued that the two key witnesses who testified against King at his trial have changed their stories, that no physical evidence exists and surveillance video used at trial was of extremely poor quality.

Vince Imbordino, a prosecutor with the Maricopa County attorney’s office, argued that the photographic evidence was clear and that if jurors didn’t believe King was guilty, they wouldn’t have convicted him.

King was convicted of fatally shooting security guard Richard Butts and clerk Ron Barman at a Phoenix convenience store two days after Christmas in 1989. Butts and Barman both were married fathers whose families have testified that their deaths in a robbery that netted $72 devastated them.

Shortly before the killings, King had been released from a seven-year prison term on kidnapping and sexual assault charges. Police say King, who was 18 at the time, and another man kidnapped a woman and took her to an abandoned house, where both repeatedly and brutally sexually assaulted her over six hours.

Before he was sentenced in that crime, deputy adult probation officer Lee Brinkmoeller wrote that King had plans to reform himself.

“The defendant’s plans for the future are to become a machinist and to have his own car, house, family, and start being able to do things for his mother for all the things she has done for him,” Brinkmoeller wrote. “He states that he wants to have his mother be proud of him before she dies and he wants to be somebody.”

Court documents show King had a troubled childhood. Born in a taxi on the way to the hospital in Phoenix, King was one of 12 siblings whose alcoholic, abusive and mentally disturbed father died of a heart attack when King was 11, according to court records.

Records also say King’s mother struggled to provide for the children, who were so hungry at times that they tried to catch crawdads in irrigation canals and frequently were without electricity.

King reported to a prison psychiatrist that he had heard voices on and off his entire life, and suffered from anxiety and insomnia.

His son, 20-year-old Eric Harrison, saw King for the first time Thursday at the clemency hearing and asked the board to spare his father.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen my dad, ever in life, and I know I love him,” Harrison said. “That’s my dad. He gave me life. Just don’t take him.”

King is the 23rd death row inmates Arizona has executed with the three-drug method since it began using lethal injection in 1993.

The state had previously executed 38 inmates with lethal gas since it started using that method in 1934. Another 28 inmates were executed by hanging between 1910 and 1931.

Source: AP, March 29, 2011

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U.S.:Substitutes Sought for Deadly Drug

The federal government told state attorneys general that it had run out of a crucial execution drug and was exploring alternatives, dashing states’ hopes of obtaining a federal supply of the drug. In January, states wrote Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asking for help obtaining sodium thiopental. The anesthetic is used by virtually all death penalty states, but supplies ran short when its American manufacturer stopped production. “The federal government does not have any reserves of sodium thiopental for lethal injections and is therefore facing the same dilemma as many states,” Mr. Holder said in a March 4 letter sent to the National Association of Attorneys General and obtained by The Associated Press. He said federal officials were researching alternatives. The immediate impact of the federal shortage is minimal. A lawsuit challenging the government’s injection procedures is pending, and the government has not executed anyone since 2003. Meanwhile, Ohio on Thursday put to death Johnnie Baston, a Toledo store owner’s killer, with the country’s first use of the surgical sedative pentobarbital as a standalone execution drug. Ohio switched to pentobarbital after sodium thiopental production was discontinued. Oklahoma also uses pentobarbital, a barbiturate, but with other drugs.

Source: AP, March 11, 2011

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Ohio executes Johnnie Baston

Johnnie Baston

LUCASVILLE, Ohio -- Ohio has put to death the killer of a Toledo store owner with the country's first-ever use of pentobarbital as a stand-alone execution drug.

Baston was pronounced dead at 10:30 a.m. by warden Donald Morgan at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.

Baston died by a lethal dose of the surgical sedative pentobarbital, the first standalone use of the drug to execute someone in the U.S.

Department of Rehabilitation and Correction spokesman Carlo LoParo says Baston confessed to his crime in a lie detector test last week.

The 37-year-old Baston was sentenced to die for killing Chong-Hoon Mah, a South Korean immigrant who was shot in the back of the head.

Baston's attorney says his client instructed him not to comment on the issue.

Batson becomes the 2nd condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Ohio and the 43rd overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999.

Batson becomes the 9th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1243rd overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.

Source: AP, Rick Halperin, March 10, 2011

U.S.: First execution of death row prisoner with single injection of drug used for putting down pets

Holding cell adjacent to
Lucasville's execution chamber

A killer was to be put to death today with a single injection of the sedative pentobarbital - the first time the drug has been used in a U.S. execution.

Johnnie Baston, 37, was scheduled to be executed this morning at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, for the 1994 murder of a store owner.

Pentobarbital is normally used to put down pets and other animals.

In the past, Ohio has had problems inserting needles into prisoners, including the 2009 execution of Romell Broom, who was sentenced to die for the rape and murder of a teenage girl.

The governor stopped the procedure after two hours. Broom complained that he was stuck with needles at least 18 times and suffered intense pain.

He has sued, arguing a second attempt to put him to death would be unconstitutionally cruel.

Now Baston's execution is expected to give inmates speedier access to attorneys in case something goes wrong when needles are being inserted and make the process more open.

An attorney concerned about how an execution is going could use a death house phone to contact a fellow lawyer who in turn could alert officials, said a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.

But the inmate will have to give up one of his three personal witnesses -usually a family member - to have the lawyer present.

Judges will have the final say on problems, which will limit abuse of the system.

Although the prisoner will now be just a few feet from witnesses as the needles are inserted, a curtain will be drawn and the procedure will still be shown on closed-circuit television.

Using CCTV is meant to protect the anonymity of the executioners and to reduce the pressure they might feel having an audience watching them work.

Even before the change, Ohio had one of the most transparent execution procedures in the country.

Several states, such as Missouri, Texas and Virginia, show nothing of the insertion procedure and allow witnesses to watch only as the lethal chemicals begin to flow.

Oklahoma also uses pentobarbital, a barbiturate, but in combination with other drugs that paralyze inmates and stop their hearts.

Ohio switched to pentobarbital after the company that made the drug it previously used, sodium thiopental, announced production was being discontinued.

Baston was sentenced to die for killing 53-year-old Chong-Hoon Mah, a South Korean immigrant who set up two business in Toledo. He will become the ninth prisoner to be executed this year.

Republican Governor John Kasich last week rejected Baston's plea for mercy based on the victim's family's opposition to capital punishment.

Source: Daily Mail, March 10, 2011

Ohio has success with new death penalty drug

Ohio appears ready to continue an execution rate of about 1 per month following a successful procedure putting to death a killer with a single dose of pentobarbital, a drug never before used by itself in an execution.

37-year-old Johnnie Baston briefly gasped and appeared to grimace during Thursday’s execution at the Southern Correctional Facility in Lucasville, but the moment passed quickly and he lay still for most of the 13-minute process.

Ohio has an execution a month scheduled for the next 12 months with the exception of December, including an April 12 date for Clarence Carter, sentenced to die for beating to death a fellow Hamilton County Jail inmate in 1998.

Baston was sentenced to die for the 1994 shooting of 53-year-old Chong Mah, a downtown Toledo shopkeeper.

Source: Associated Press, March 11, 2011
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Giving Life After Death Row

EIGHT years ago I was sentenced to death for the murders of my wife and three children. I am guilty. I once thought that I could fool others into believing this was not true. Failing that, I tried to convince myself that it didn’t matter. But gradually, the enormity of what I did seeped in; that was followed by remorse and then a wish to make amends.

I spend 22 hours a day locked in a 6 foot by 8 foot box on Oregon’s death row. There is no way to atone for my crimes, but I believe that a profound benefit to society can come from my circumstances. I have asked to end my remaining appeals, and then donate my organs after my execution to those who need them. But my request has been rejected by the prison authorities.

Click here to read the full article.

Source: The New York Times, March 5, 2011

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California: Federal judge set to tour new San Quentin death chamber

San Quentin's new death chamber,
"built for nearly $900,000 and designed
solely for lethal injections".

Nearly 5 years ago, a San Jose federal judge went on a highly unusual expedition to San Quentin's aging death chamber, eventually finding that the converted eerie green gas chamber was outdated and replete with potential problems for carrying out executions.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel will return to San Quentin, this time for a tour of the state's new and untested death chamber, built for nearly $900,000 and designed solely for lethal injections. With the visit, California will take a step toward resolving whether it can resume executions on a death row now brimming with nearly 720 inmates.

But it may prove to be a small step.

Major questions continue to surround the state's effort to revise its lethal injection procedures and end a court showdown that began in February 2006. Five years after giving death row inmate Michael Morales a late reprieve and putting executions on hold, Fogel still appears to have a lot of work to do before California prison officials can start escorting condemned killers into that new execution chamber.

Questions remain

California officials must show they've addressed Fogel's previous concerns that the state's execution method was "broken," from poor training of execution team members to an antiquated death chamber. The state, under orders from former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, spent years revising its lethal injection procedures -- and now Fogel is reviewing whether the state has done enough to ensure it can carry out humane executions.

The judge's latest review starts with the trip to San Quentin, where he'll be accompanied by state prison officials, lawyers and f5 news organizations, including the Mercury News. The state unveiled the new chamber last fall, hoping to rectify the problems Fogel identified in his 2006 findings.

"The tour of the chamber is still relevant," said Elisabeth Semel, head of Boalt Hall School of Law's death penalty clinic. "The question remains whether the state has answered the questions that Judge Fogel had in 2006. The questions he had "... are very much on the table."

Drug complications

While the California case is the most exhaustive to unfold in the courts, the debate over lethal injection continues to simmer across the country. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld Kentucky's three-drug fatal cocktail in a major 2008 ruling that set the guidelines for lethal injection procedures, but many states continue to struggle with moving executions forward.

The issue has been complicated in the past year by the inability of states to secure a supply of sodium thiopental, the anesthesia used as the first drug in the three-drug combination used by California and most other states. The sole U.S. supplier of the drug has stopped producing it, and states such as California have gone overseas to get fresh doses, prompting critics to say they are getting the anesthesia from unreliable back-alley suppliers in Europe and putting inmates at risk of cruel executions.

California ran out of the drug on the eve of Albert Greenwood Brown's execution last fall, but has restocked through 2014 if the courts permit executions to resume.

In the meantime, Ohio and Washington have abandoned the use of three-drug combinations and sodium thiopental altogether, turning to fatal doses of pentobarbital, a surgical sedative, to carry out executions. Fogel, in evaluating California's new procedures, has hinted that may be a better option for California, but for now, state officials say the new procedure is constitutional and that executions should resume immediately.

Condemned await fate

Death penalty supporters insist California's method complies with the Supreme Court's standards. If executions resume, at least a half dozen inmates have exhausted their appeals, including condemned Santa Clara County killer David Allen Raley.

"I think we have a protocol that is constitutional," said Kent Scheidegger, legal director of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, "and a stock of drugs to carry it out."

John Grele, a lawyer for 2 death row inmates challenging the method, said the state has not fixed its problem.

"What they did was take the old procedure and put a new label on it," he said.

As for Tuesday's trip to San Quentin, Grele added:

"We'll see when we get there. This is the 1st time we've been permitted to inspect it."

Source: Mercury News, Feb. 7, 2011

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Ohio only state to execute more in 2010

Ted Strickland

Ohio continued to buck a national trend on the death penalty this year, ranking second in the nation to Texas in the number of executions.

Ohio had eight men lethally injected, making it the only state to increase executions in 2010, according to the annual report by the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization in Washington, D.C.

The total would have been higher had Gov. Ted Strickland not spared the lives of two convicted killers: Kevin Keith of Crawford County and Sidney Cornwell of Mahoning County.

Strickland, who will leave office Jan. 9, said yesterday that he feels "terrible" that Ohio was the only state in which executions rose this year. "It's one of the responsibilities of governing that I won't mind giving up," he said.

But Strickland also said that some murderers deserve the death penalty. "In a perfect world, we wouldn't have a death penalty," he said. "But there are some people who are so terribly damaged, so twisted and devoid of empathy for other people who, in the most calculated way, decide to do terrible things to people."

Executions in the United States in 2010 were down 12percent from last year, the center reported. The nation had 46 executions this year, down from 52 last year. This year's total was less than half of that in 1999, the report stated.

Texas had 17 executions this year, a 29percent drop from 2009.

Behind Ohio, four states - Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Virginia - each had three executions.

Only 12 states had any executions.

"Whether it's concerns about the high costs of the death penalty at a time when budgets are being slashed, the risks of executing the innocent, unfairness, or other reasons, the nation continued to move away from the death penalty in 2010," said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center.

The process has been complicated not only by legal challenges but also by shortages of a critical drug, thiopental sodium. It is used exclusively in Ohio's lethal-injection process and as part of a three-drug system in other states. The sole U.S. manufacturer of the drug does not expect to resume production until spring.

Although the nation's number of new death sentences has remained about the same, Ohio added six people to Death Row this year, an increase from the trickle of new sentences in the previous few years. Ohio has 156 men and one woman on Death Row.

Still, that is a big drop from just a few years ago, when more than 200 people were awaiting execution in Ohio prisons.

Ohio's steady stream of executions, coupled with a trend toward more sentences of life in prison without the possibility of parole, has continued to trim Death Row.

Gov.-elect John Kasich, a Republican who supports capital punishment, will face reviewing two scheduled executions early in his term, in February and March.

In addition, county prosecutors have asked the Ohio Supreme Court to set execution dates in about 10 other cases. Dates are being held open monthly through the end of 2011.

Ohio is also going against a geographic trend. The center reported that, since capital punishment was restored in 1976, 82 percent of all executions in the U.S. have been in the South.

Source: The Columbus Dispatch, December 21, 2010