by Last Night in Little Rock

From the list-servs: The New Jersey General Assembly adopted a moratorium on executions this afternoon by a vote of 55 to 21 with 2 abstensions. The NY Times noted Friday that this was the likely outcome, as did TChris here.

Update: (TL): Here's an AP article on the passage

by TChris

The State of New Jersey is poised to impose a moratorium on the death penalty.

New Jersey would block executions while a panel examined death penalty-related issues and for two months after the panel issued its report. The process would take about a year.

The state senate passed a bill to suspend executions pending the study, and the state assembly is likely to pass it on Monday. The acting governor, Richard Codey, said he’ll sign the law.

“An innocent man is going to be murdered tonight. When my innocence is proven, I hope Americans will realize the injustice of the death penalty as all other civilized countries have.”
- Roger Coleman’s last words before he was executed by the state of Virginia May 20, 1992

Roger Coleman was executed in Virginia in 1992 (background here.) Today, Governor Mark Warner ordered DNA tests in his case. If Coleman is innocent, it will be the first documented case of the execution of an innocent person in the United States. The first, but probably not the only one.

This was not a sudden decision on the part of Gov. Warner. He's been sitting on the request for years. In 2003, Leonard Pitts at the Miami Herald wrote Death Penalty an Error Free Myth :

Update: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has refused to hold a private clemency meeting for Allen. Last week he refused to hold a public meeting. Things don't look good.

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Clarence Ray Allen is the next prisoner set for execution in California -- on January 17.

He is still recuperating from a major heart attack in September that [his lawyers] maintain requires surgery. Diabetes has damaged other organs and left him legally blind and confined to a wheelchair. His lawyers also argue that San Quentin's inadequate medical care, the subject of a federal lawsuit, has contributed to his condition.

Allen has received support from former San Quentin warden Daniel Vasquez, who visited the inmate several weeks ago and told Schwarzenegger in a letter that executing him would be ``shameful.'' Former California Supreme Court Justice Joseph Grodin, who wrote a 1986 ruling upholding Allen's death sentence, also urged the governor to grant clemency, saying the execution would ``violate societal standards of decency.''

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will decide whether to rant Allen clemency. Most see it as a longshot. I'll be debating the case tonight and advocating clemency on ABC radio in Los Angeles at 7pm PT, you can listen online here.

It's an issue that is going to rise again and again as death row's population becomes grayer.

This is an unusual story about a woman who witnesses an execution -- that of her brother, who killed his three year old daughter. About the unlikely author:

Gina Farthing, 44, has been the features editor at The News Virginian since September 2004. She was a Navy brat born in Morocco, was raised on Long Island, N.Y., and now lives in Waynesboro. She has worked at the Danville Register & Bee and Reidsville (N.C.) Review/Eden Daily News. She is married to Jim Farthing, a corrections officer, and has two grown children.

It's a long series, beginning here, but one well worth reading. Her brother pleaded guilty to the crime and waived appeals of his death sentence. Ms. Farthing says of her reasons for writing the article:

The Central Asian nation Kyrgyzstan today ended the death penalty once and for all.

Kyrgyzstan's president effectively ended the use of the death penalty in this ex-Soviet republic by extending a moratorium on the punishment until its planned abolition, a presidential spokesman said Friday.

President Kurmanbek Bakiyev signed the decree Thursday aiming "to humanize and liberalize" the criminal code and urged parliament to support plans to do away with the death penalty, said presidential spokesman Dosali Esenaliyev.

A moratorium has been in place in Kyrgyzstan since 1998. Where is Kyrgyzstan? Right next to Uzbekistan (see this map.) There was a revolution in Kyrgyzstan in March, spurred by protests. Hopefully, it will spread to its authoritarian, torturous neighbor soon.

Bakiyev was elected president in July. The country has 5 million people, 75% of whom are Sunni Muslims. There is a 99% literacy rate for men, and 96% for women. (Stats here.)

You can read more about Krgyzstan here.

U.S. District District Court Judge Malcolm Muir has thrown out the death sentence of David Paul Hammer, who was convicted of strangling a cell mate.

U.S. District Judge Malcolm Muir ruled that prosecutors should have disclosed to David Paul Hammer's lawyers the existence of four interviews that may have supported Hammer's claim that he used rope made from bed sheets for bondage sex. The interviews could have led the jury to conclude that Hammer did not engage in substantial planning before he killed bank robber Andrew Marti at Allenwood Federal Penitentiary in 1996, the judge said.

The article doesn't mention that David Paul Hammer claimed that while on death row in Terre Haute, Timothy McVeigh told him that Terry Nichols refused to help build the bomb that blew up the Oklahoma City federal building. The judge ruled, over the Government's objection, that Hammer could testify as a defense witness at Terry Nichols' state trial. Hammer attempted suicide after McVeigh's execution by mainlining insulin.

To get in the spirit of Christmas, here is a letter by Luis Ramirez in which he writes about his first day on Death Row. Luis was executed in Texas in October, 2005, and always professed his innocence.

What's In the Brown Paper Bag ?
By Luis Ramirez #999309

I'm about the share with you a story who's telling is long past due. It's a familiar story to most of you reading this from death row. And now it's one that all of you in "free world" may benefit from. This is the story of my first day on the row.

I came here in May of 1999. The exact date is something that I can't recall.

I do remember arriving in the afternoon . I was placed in a cell on H-20 wing over at the Ellis Unit in Huntsville, Tx. A Tsunami of emotions and thoughts were going through my mind at the time. I remember the only things in the cell were a mattress, pillow, a couple of sheets, a pillow case, a roll of toilet paper, and a blanket ... I remember sitting there, utterly lost.

The Death Penalty Information Center reports that death sentences have hit their lowest level since 1976.

In 1999, 276 death sentences were imposed. The figure has dropped every year since, falling to 125 last year. With 10 days to go in 2005, 96 death sentences are projected to be handed down this year, the lowest total since 1976.

The reasons are varied:

Richard C. Dieter, executive director of the center, based in Washington, D.C., said several factors had contributed to the decrease in death sentences — prime among them the fact that jurors in all but one of the 38 states that had capital punishment laws were able to render sentences of life without parole. Jurors, he said, are becoming increasingly comfortable with voting for such sentences rather than death.

Here are the latest death penalty statistics by state.

2,000 people in Los Angeles paid their respects yesterday to Stanley Tookie Williams, executed last week in California.

"Many of the people who lined up today for a last look at the man didn't know him; never met him," Ali said. "But they came to pay their respects because they have a Tookie in their family, or identify with his struggle."

Who were they? Here's one example:

When elementary schoolteacher Macella Hibbler, 34, heard that Williams' body was on public view, she threw sweaters on her three young children and hurried to the mortuary to see the man whose life story had saturated the news media only a week ago. "My only thought has been this: How can I get my children to understand, I mean really understand, why we're here?" she said. "I'm telling them, 'Watch the road you take and make wise decisions. That way you won't wind up in a coffin.' "

Another said:

Standing outside the mortuary, watching the spectacle in the street, Wanda Smith, 42, shook her head and said, "I feel sorry for Tookie. It could have been my own brother, or my son. "I hope that his death will make gangbangers stop killing each other," she said. "I've been to so many funerals, it's heartbreaking."

I think that is the legacy Williams hoped for.

The New Jersey Senate today passed a one year moratorium on the death penalty.

A co-sponsor, Sen. Robert J. Martin, R-Morris and Passaic, noted that 50 of the 60 death sentences imposed since the penalty was reinstated in 1982 have been overturned. "Something is fundamentally flawed with that statute," Martin said.

If passed, New Jersey will be the first state in the modern era to legislatively enact a moratorium. Maryland and Illinois have imposed moratoriums based on executive orders. More details:

The state has 10 men on death row. The bill the Senate will consider would create a death penalty study commission to scrutinize the state's death penalty law, particularly whether it is applied fairly, its costs, whether it is a deterrent to crime and if it should be abolished. The commission would complete its work by Nov. 15, 2006. In the meantime, a moratorium would be imposed on all state executions until at least 60 days after the commission finishes its work.

by TChris

TalkLeft wrote here about Cory Maye, a man who shot a police officer in the middle of the night, after the officer broke down Maye's door, believing Maye was a drug dealer. The cop's mistake (the dealer lived next door) and his aggressive approach to search warrant executions led to his tragic death, but Maye is black and the cop (son of the police chief) was white, so a Mississippi jury found Maye guilty of murder. Maye is facing a death sentence for doing nothing more than protecting his family from a perceived intruder.

TalkLeft credited Radley Balko at the Agitator for pursuing this story. Today, the Public Eye at CBS News reviews the reactions of other bloggers to Maye's case and asks whether the mainstream media will follow the blogosphere in reporting this important story.

Will it? This isn't a story about an attractive white girl gone missing in Aruba, so the answer is: don't count on it.