Ohio executes Daniel Lee Bedford

Daniel Lee Bedford

LUCASVILLE, Ohio (AP) — The state on Tuesday executed a man who said he didn't remember fatally shooting his ex-girlfriend and her boyfriend at the woman's Cincinnati apartment in 1984.

Daniel Lee Bedford, 63, became the third inmate in Ohio and the nation to be put to death using the surgical sedative pentobarbital as a stand-alone execution drug. He was pronounced dead at 11:18 a.m.

Bedford's attorneys pushed to block the lethal injection in a last-minute legal battle. They argued Bedford had dementia and a mild mental disability and wasn't competent enough to understand why he was being executed. They also said he was denied legal proceedings to which he was entitled.

Prosecutors challenged the idea that Bedford wasn't competent and successfully appealed a stay of execution issued Monday by a federal judge.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused the defense's request to block the execution.

Bedford is the fourth Ohio inmate put to death this year.

He was sentenced to death after confessing to authorities that he shot Gwen Toepfert, 25, and John Smith, 27, at Toepfert's Cincinnati apartment, apparently because he was jealous after finding the couple there several days before the slayings.

Bedford learned from Toepfert's roommate that the couple were home and waited at the apartment where, armed with a revolver and a shotgun, he killed Smith and shot Toepfert multiple times before returning to her body and firing a shotgun blast into her groin to be sure she was dead, prosecutors said.

Bedford told the state parole board in March he didn't remember the slayings but that his attorneys had told him details and he was "sorry it happened."

Relatives of Toepfert and Smith expressed support for the execution, saying they believe the killings were merciless and Bedford knew what he was doing.

Gov. John Kasich denied clemency, and the Ohio Supreme Court also refused to block the execution, rejecting the defense's arguments about Bedford's competency.

Bedford becomes the 4th condemned inmate in Ohio to be put to death this year and the 45th overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1999.

Bedford becomes the 16th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1250th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977. There are 4 more executions scheduled in the US this month and 7 more in June.

Source: AP, Rick Halperin, May 17, 2011

Related article: "Brain-damaged man to be executed using Lundbeck’s neurological treatment drugs", Reprieve, May 16, 2011
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British Woman Decapitated In Spanish Island Supermarket

 

Tenerife, Spain – I don’t normally post stories from other countries, mainly because I barely have enough time to cover the messed up stuff going on in my own. But this one is just too crazy not to talk about.

While the shopping district of Arona was hosting tourists and shoppers, a 28-year-old Bulgarian man walked into a supermarket with a machete and launched an attack on a 62-year-old British woman inside the store. Without saying a word, he stabbed her and then he decapitated her.

He then walked outside with her bloody, severed head in his hands and threw it on the pavement before being subdued by security guards. Police say the man may be homeless and has a history of mental illness, having recently been released from the hospital in February after received treatment for violent behavior. He did not know the woman he attacked, she was just at the wrong place at the wrong time.

People who witnessed the attack had to treated for shock, and from some of the stories they are telling, it’s perfectly understandable. One minute you are shopping for trinkets while on vacation on a Spanish island, the next a severed head is rolling towards you down the sidewalk.

One witness described a chilling scene: “I thought someone had fainted or something and walked on, then I heard screaming and looked behind and saw a scruffy, unkempt man of about mid 20s holding a head by the hair,” Colin Kirby said. “It had blood on it and I thought at first it was a sick joke stunt, the man was muttering and shouting…It looked like he was carrying a prop from the CLASH OF THE TITANS but then I realized it wasn’t a joke.”

Kirby is a man after my own heart. No matter the circumstance, always ready with a movie reference.
Arona is a popular town on the Spanish resort island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands. It is located 10 miles from the popular beach resort of Los Christianos. Of course none of that means anything, really. I just thought it would be a nice to end this horrific article with some geography in case you aren’t able to watch the following video.

Cruel and usual: US solitary confinement

As incarceration rates explode in the US, thousands are placed in solitary confinement, often without cause. In Europe, solitary confinement has largely been abandoned, and it is widely viewed as a form of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, in violation of international human rights conventions.

The spectre of Bradley Manning lying naked and alone in a tiny cell at the Quantico Marine Base, less than 50 miles from Washington, DC, conjures up images of an American Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib, where isolation and deprivation have been raised to the level of torture.

In fact, the accused Wikileaker, now in his tenth month of solitary confinement, is far from alone in his plight. Every day in the US, tens of thousands of prisoners languish in "the hole".

A few of them are prison murderers or rapists who present a threat to others. Far more have committed minor disciplinary infractions within prison or otherwise run afoul of corrections staff. Many of them suffer from mental illness, and are isolated for want of needed treatment; others are children, segregated for their own "protection"; a growing number are elderly and have spent half their lives or more in utter solitude.

No one knows for sure what their true numbers are. Many states, as well as the federal government, flatly declare that solitary confinement does not exist in their prison systems. As for their euphemistically named "Secure Housing Units" or "Special Management Units", most states do not report occupancy data, nor do wardens report on the inmates sent to "administrative segregation".

Prosecutor, judge and jury

By common estimate, more than 20,000 inmates are held in supermax prisons, which by definition isolate their prisoners. Perhaps 50,000 to 80,000 more are in solitary confinement on any given day in other prisons and local jails, many of them within sight of communities where Americans go about their everyday lives.

Click here to read the full article.

Source: Al Jazeera, Jean Casella, March 24, 2011

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Japan: Death row inmate, 75 today, should be granted a stay of execution after 43 years in solitary confinement on death row

Execution chamber
at Tokyo Detention Center

A man believed to be the world’s longest serving death row inmate, who has spent the last 43 years on death row and is 75 today, should be granted a stay of execution, removed from death row and his case reviewed, Amnesty International said today.

Amnesty International and the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN) today called on the Minister of Justice to grant a stay of execution for Hakamada Iwao in accordance with Article 479 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and for him to be taken off death row. Article 479 provides for a person to be granted a stay of execution in cases where the person is found to be suffering from mental illness.

Clare Bracey, Death Penalty Campaigner for Amnesty International UK, said:

“Having been locked away on death row for the last 43 years, with over 1/2 of that time spent in solitary confinement [emphasis added], and not knowing if each day might be his last, it is no wonder that Hakamada Iwao is suffering from physical and mental ill health.

“International law prohibits the execution of people with mental health issues, and Hakamada's case typifies the worst consequences of Japan's justice system

“The Japanese authorities should grant him a stay of execution in accordance with the law and review all similar cases."

Hakamada Iwao, has been on death row since 1968. He was convicted after an unfair trial of the 1966 murder of the managing director of the factory where he worked, and the man's wife and 2 children.

Within months of the finalisation of his death sentence, Hakamada began to show signs of seriously disturbed thinking and behaviour. The Prison authorities have refused access to Hakamada’s medical records, even to his family members and his legal representatives. Hakamada’s mental health condition continues to be of concern.

Hakamada confessed after 20 days of interrogation by police without a lawyer present but later retracted his confession saying that he had been beaten and threatened during the interrogations. One of the judges who convicted Hakamada, Kumamoto Norimichi, stated publicly in 2007 that he believed Hakamada was innocent, but that he had been outvoted in the decision.

Visitors to Hakamada in recent months have found him to be "confused, disorientated and rambling". He has been known to refuse his medication for hypertension and he suffers from diabetes.

His legal team, family and supporters are calling for Hakamada to be granted a stay of execution and removed from death row. They also continue to press his claim for a retrial based on concerns about the soundness of evidence against him. Japan has not commuted a death sentence since 1975.

Amnesty International further calls on the Government of Japan to initiate an immediate independent review of all cases where there is credible evidence that prisoners may be mentally ill and could fall within the scope of Article 479.

Executions in Japan are by hanging and are typically carried out in secret. Death row inmates are only notified on the morning of their execution and their families are usually informed only after the execution has taken place.

This means that prisoners live in constant fear of immediate execution. Enduring these conditions for years, or even decades, has led to extensive depression and mental illness among death row inmates.

Notes: The Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN) is a regional network of over 50 members including lawyers, NGOs, journalists, human rights defenders and activists from 23 countries across the Asia Pacific region. ADPAN campaigns for an end to the death penalty across all countries in the region.

Amnesty International opposes the death penalty as a violation of the right to life in all cases without exception, regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender, or the method used by the state to carry out the execution. It calls on the government of Japan to immediately commute all death sentences and introduce an official moratorium on executions as a first step towards abolition of the death penalty.

A study group on the death penalty established by the former Justice Minister Ms Chiba Keiko is continuing to work under the current Justice Minister, Mr. Eda Satsuki. No date for its report has been announced.

Source: Amnesty International, March 10, 2011

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U.S.: Trauma common among mentally ill death-row inmates

Pablo Stuart is a forensic psychiatrist. He specializes in capital cases and for the last 25 years he has been traveling around the country examining death row inmates, and reflecting on what he has found.

"Everyone I work with is mentally ill," he told me recently. "Every once in a while I'll have a new and different case, but there is a profile."

If one were to boil that profile down to a single word, it would be trauma.

Most of these death row inmates have some concoction of a range of predictable and horrific childhood and early adolescent experiences. Often it begins with sexual, physical or mental abuse. Second, in those families where abuse is rampant, it is most often the case that some form of substance abuse is present, too.

"Now you've got a kid with a traumatic history and a genetic predisposition for abuse and no parental supervision," Stuart says. Thirdly, there is often a pattern of multigenerational mental illness.

"So, mental illness, substance abuse and trauma-related disorder," he says, "that's the person who ends up charged with a capital crime."

Stuart works with the most extreme examples of this, but his observations are in line with a growing consensus about the need across the board to start integrating what's known as "trauma-informed therapy" into our health care system in a much more comprehensive way. Linda Rosenberg, the president of the National Council of Community Behavioral Healthcare, in a recently published letter called "Call to Arms" wrote: "(I)nstead of asking 'What's wrong with you?' we should be asking 'What happened to you?' "

The prevalence of trauma in behaviorally challenged or dysfunctional people is well established. The most comprehensive look at this phenomenon was documented in the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study, a joint collaboration between by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente, which provides a raft of fascinating data on how trauma develops, and what the long-term psychological consequences can be. What is less clear, however, is how best to incorporate that knowledge into a better system of care. The greater the exposure to trauma at an early age, the more likely a "negative outcome" can be expected later on in life. So treating it early and effectively requires agreement that the common denominator is likely trauma, which can serve as a starting point for further treatment.

"The fact that there is such consistency on these cases is significant," says Stuart. "Some of these people, they just never had a chance."

These dynamics are playing out right in our backyard. San Quentin, right up the road, has the biggest death row in the world -- excluding, of course, the de facto death rows that abound in dictatorial regimes like Libya. San Quentin inmates come from all around the country, of course. But there's no denying that the dynamics at work on Oakland's streets are producing large numbers of traumatized kids, many of whom will predictably go on to channel those experiences into a debilitating adulthood.

So what is "trauma informed care?"

"We must adopt a systemic approach which ensures that all people who come into contact with the behavioral health system will receive services that are sensitive to the impact of trauma," Rosenberg says. "They must be able to receive such services regardless of which 'door' they enter or whether they ever find their way to a trauma-specific treatment program. We can begin by recognizing the primacy of trauma as an overarching principle. Being trauma informed means realizing that the vast majority of people we come in contact have trauma histories. Trauma must be seen as the expectation, not the exception, in behavioral health treatment systems."

Source: Oakland Tribune, March 6, 2011

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Ohio: Mercy plea rejected for convicted killer, Nazi sympathizer

The Ohio Parole Board says Spisak does not accept responsibility for his actions.The Ohio Parole Board has unanimously rejected a mercy plea by convicted killer and Nazi sympathizer Frank Spisak of Cleveland.

Spisak, 59, is scheduled to be executed on Feb. 17. He would be the 1st to die under the watch of Gov. John Kasich unless the Republican governor grants clemency.

The board, in a 9-0 decision, said that Spisak's argument that his life should be spared because his case was not "the worst of the worst" is invalid.

"Spisak killed 3 people, tried to kill at least 1 other, and shot at a 5th in his admitted plan to kill as many African Americans as possible and start a race war in Cleveland," the board said. "His victims were innocent, unsuspecting strangers."

The board said Spisak, who once asked the state to pay for a sex-change operation when he was in prison, does not accept responsibility for his actions and continues to blame others.

Kasich, who supports the death penalty, has the ultimate clemency power to spare Spisak's life, grant a reprieve for a period, or allow the execution to go forward.

Spisak committed the murders in 1982 on the campus of Cleveland State University. He blamed mental illness for his actions.

Source: Columbus Dispatch, January 21, 2011

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Japan's Justice minister to study pros and cons of death penalty

Execution chamber
at Tokyo Detention Center

Justice Minister Satsuki Eda said Friday it is time to study whether to abolish the death penalty amid international calls to abandon capital punishment. "I think now is the time, from a global point of view, to look into whether it is good or not to maintain capital punishment," Eda said at a news conference.

But he did not elaborate on if he would suspend executions while the study is under way, only saying, "I will consider it carefully." He also said capital punishment is an irreparable penalty because it claims human lives.

Eda, a judge-turned-politician who also served as House of Councillors president, joined the cabinet of Prime Minister Naoto Kan in a reshuffle last week, replacing Yoshito Sengoku as justice minister.

Last Friday, Eda told reporters after assuming the portfolio, "Capital punishment is a flawed penalty."

According to the London-based Amnesty International, 139 countries and territories—more than 2/3 of nations—have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice, while 58 keep it.

Source: Japan Today, January 21, 2011

Japan to consider abolishing death penalty

Japan’s new justice minister, a veteran opponent of capital punishment, has ordered his staff to consider scrapping the death penalty. "The time has come to look at the global situation and consider whether it is good to have this [death penalty] system," said Satsuki Eda, who was named justice minister in a cabinet reshuffle last week.

A study group set up by the justice ministry would consider abolition under its review of capital punishment, said Mr Eda, who is the 4th person to serve as justice minister since the ruling Democratic party’s landmark general election win in September 2009.

Japanese campaigners against the death penalty suffered a setback last year when the DPJ's 1st justice minister, Keiko Chiba, put aside her long-standing opposition to capital punishment and authorised the hanging of 2 murderers.

Mr Eda appears markedly more willing than Ms Chiba or her two successors to publicly question the use of capital punishment. In his first press conference last week Mr Eda described it as a “defective” punishment, highlighting the impossibility of undoing erroneous executions.

However, the weakness of the DPJ government and high levels of public support for the death penalty mean rapid action is unlikely.

Some human rights activists are concerned that notoriously conservative justice ministry bureaucrats will be able to dominate the review.

"Currently the study group is set up inside the Ministry of Justice, and this means it is likely to back the current practice," said Makoto Teranaka, secretary-general of Amnesty International. Mr Teranaka was also disappointed that Mr Eda had not announced a moratorium on executions.

Even if the review stops short of recommending abolition, it could clear the way for changes to the secretive system under which prisoners are kept in near-isolation – sometimes for decades – with no way of knowing if it is their last day.

Amnesty has accused Japan of breaking its commitment to international standards by executing mentally ill prisoners and has protested against the restrictive regime under which it says condemned prisoners are not allowed to move around cells, apart from toilet visits.

The number of people sentenced to death in Japan fell to 14 last year from 20 in 2009, but the slow pace of executions means that the number of death row inmates has reached 111, the highest since 1949.

Source: Financial Times, January 21, 2011

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