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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3 executions at Parchman, Mississippi, set for May; more possible

The 1st execution this year is set for Tuesday, and on successive Tuesdays for the next 2 weeks 2 more inmates are scheduled to die by lethal injection.

And the 3 may not be the only death row inmates executed this year.

"There could be more this year, but no way to tell how many more," said Jan Schaefer, spokeswoman for the state attorney general's office. On Thursday, the Mississippi Supreme Court set Robert Simon Jr.'s execution for May 24.

The court had previously set a May 10 execution date for Benny Joe Stevens and a May 17 execution date for Rodney Gray.

In May last year, the state had its 1st back-to-back executions when Gerald Holland and Paul Woodward were put to death. Also, the state executed Joseph Daniel Burns in July.

The state Supreme Court set the stage for the 3rd execution this month when it ruled against Simon in a motion from his attorney alleging that Simon is incompetent for execution after he hit his head in prison.

Simon's attorney, T.H. Freeland IV of Oxford, had filed the motion April 1 in response to Attorney General Jim Hood's request for an April 20 execution date.

The court on Thursday said there was no sufficient evidence showing Simon has a mental condition.

Freeland couldn't be reached Friday. He didn't describe how Simon hit his head, but said in court papers Simon can't understand his case and has trouble carrying on conversations.

Freeland wanted the state Supreme Court to send the case back to a Quitman County judge for a hearing on Simon's competency.

Simon, 47, was sentenced to death for the killings of Carl Parker, his wife, Bobbie Jo, and their son, Gregory, on Feb. 2, 1990.

He was sentenced to life in prison for the killing of Charlotte Parker, the slain couple's 9-year-old daughter.

The killings occurred a few hours after the family had returned to their rural Quitman County home from church services.

Starting with Simon, the death row inmates will be executed with a new lethal injection cocktail.

Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said MDOC will use the drug pentobarbital in its 3-drug lethal injection instead of sodium thiopental, the commonly used drug in prior executions across the country.

A nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental has prompted some states to look for an alternative.

Gray, Stevens and Simon through their civil attorney had challenged in court that MDOC failed to properly publicize the change in regulations to switch to a new drug as required by the Administrative Procedures Act.

Last month, Hinds County Circuit Judge Bill Gowan rejected the challenge. And Thursday, the state Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal of Gowan's ruling.

"I don't think at this moment there is anything else we can do," said Jackson lawyer David Neil McCarty, who represents the inmates on that issue.

"It's frustrating because we think we can win on this issue, but it will only happen after the executions," he said.

Stevens, now 52, was sentenced to death in 1999 for killing four people in Marion County's Foxworth community.

Killed were Glenda Lee Reid, 38, Stevens' former wife; Wesley Lee Reid, 38, her husband; Dylan Reid, her 11-year-old son; and Heath Pounds, 10, a neighbor's son who apparently was spending the night with Dylan.

Gray, now 38, was sentenced to death in 1996 for the 1994 rape and murder of Grace Blackwell of Louin, 79.

Blackwell was found shot multiple times in Newton County. She last had been seen withdrawing a large amount of money from her bank.

Source: Jackson Clarion Ledger, May 7, 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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Colorado: 72 years after execution, a posthumous pardon

Joe Arridy (left)
and warden Roy Best

David Martinez didn't count the hours. That wasn't what the work was about.

"It is about making a right out of a terrible wrong in our state's history," he said.

He missed time with friends and his two daughters as he worked late defending someone he never met but considers a son.

"I refer to him as Joey," Martinez said.

Prisoner 19845, Joe Arridy was an inmate at the Colorado State Prison in Canyon City in the 1930s. He had been convicted of being an accomplice in the murder of Dorothy Drain.

Police questioned him after they found him wandering. The sheriff at the time said that Arridy mumbled a confession. Martinez doesn't believe it.

"No on else heard it and this was a sheriff who never took notes and had a very big ego," he said.

The idea of the young man recalling specifics like the sheriff claimed was also unlikely because 23-year-old Arridy functioned like a toddler.

"The State classified him as an imbecile," Martinez said.

Martinez explained that Arridy had an IQ of 46. Today, the cut off for being competent is 70.

Despite false confessions, the likelihood that Arridy was not in Pueblo at the time of the murder and an admission of guilt by someone else, Arridy was put on death row.

The man who ran the prison was Warden Roy Best. He was known as a strong-fisted man with a short fuse.

"It speaks volumes when I tell you that over Christmas the year before Joe Arridy was executed, Best took him home, he spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with his wife and his nephew," Martinez said.

The warden gave Arridy a toy train.

Most newspaper articles about Arridy showed him holding that train. He was said to have played with it ever waking minute of the day. The warden would buy new batteries for it whenever they ran out.

Arridy told reporters that he wanted to live with the warden for the rest of his life. He did.

Best walked him down the hall to the gas chamber on a Friday in 1939. By all accounts, Arridy had no idea what was going to happen.

Shortly before execution, Joe Arridy
gives away the toy train he received from
warden Roy Best to a fellow prisoner.

"All the way up to the time they put the black hood over him in the gas chamber he was smiling," Martinez said. He shakes his head while talking about it. "He did not deserve to be executed as a murderer."

After 3 years of research, Martinez compiled 600 pages in a binder.

It would end up on Gov. Bill Ritter's desk and compel him to grant the 1st posthumous pardon in Colorado history on Friday.

"I salute him for doing it. It is monumental and it brings a lot of hope for the future for the disabled community," Martinez said.

Just behind the prison tower at the state prison in Canyon City there is a place known as Woodpecker Hill. It is a place where license plates are grave markers. Arridy is buried there, now a pardoned man.

A man named Frank Agular is buried there as well. He is the man that confessed to the crime. He maintained until his execution that Arridy had nothing to do with it.

In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled that someone with Arridy's developmental disability could not be put on death row.

Related article: "1939: Joe Arridy, on Woodpecker Hill", Executed Today, January 6, 2011

Source: Denver 9 News, January 8, 2011