NH Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty
News
Death Penalty Expansion Bill to be Heard on January 31, 2012
The House Criminal Justice and Public Safety Committee will hear HB 1706 on Tuesday, January 31, 2012 in the Legislative Office Building (LOB) at 10 AM. HB 1706 will expand New Hampshire's current death penalty law into several new categories, including murders committed in a robbery . Please attend the hearing to show your opposition to this bill.
If you would like to speak, please fill out a pink card and give to the committee chair or secretary. Be prepared to wait to be called. If you submit written testimony, submit copies for all 21 committee members. Please do not read your written testimony. Keep your remarks brief and supply detail in writing.
You may choose to sign in to oppose the bill without testifying. There is a sign-in sheet in the hearing room, asking if you support or oppose the bill. Your signature matters!
Your action is important to the abolition movement!
- Write a letter to the editor or to your local newspaper!
- If
you can’t attend the hearing, contact members of the Criminal Justice and
Public Safety Committee before the hearing on January 31. Of particular
priority are those who represent you. Find legislators here.
- Governor John Lynch signed an expansion bill into law in 2011. Call Governor Lynch and urge him to support repeal of the death penalty and oppose any expansion efforts.
Although it appears there are enough votes in the committee to pass the bill, if legislators see that there is a significant number of people opposed to expansion, they may rethink their positions.
OP-ED " Abolishing the Death Penalty Creates More Resources for Police," December 20, 2011, by Daryl K. Roberts, CT Junkie News
To read the full article click HERE
"Proposals Make All Murders Death Penalty-Eligible," November 26, 2011, by Lynne Tuohy, Concord Monitor
To read the full article click HERE
"Death Penalty Doesn't 'Protect' Anyone," November 18, 2011, Opinion Piece by Arnie Alpert, New Hampshire Business Review
To read the full article click HERE
"Filling Another Coffin Will Not Bring Our Loved Ones Back," September 13, 2011, Kanya D'Almeida interviews RENNY CUSHING, founder of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights (MVFHR)
To read the full article click HERE
URGENT-- "Oppose the Death Penalty for Troy Davis"- Amnesty International
Please click HERE to sign a petition that tells Georgia authorities that you oppose the execution of Troy Davis. Troy's scheduled execution is September 21, 2011. Your action is critical.
To learn more about the Troy Davis case, please click HERE
"The Military and the Dead," August 31, 2011, Editoral in the New York Times
To read the full article click HERE
"The Quiet Revolution in the Death Penalty Debate," August 16, 2011, by Carrie Johnson, NPR
To read the full article click HERE
"Pure Hell," August 17, 2011, by Gary Roy, Concord Monitor Op-Ed Piece
To read the full article click HERE
"Expanded Death Penalty Won't Help Us, State Could Do More Good, For Less Cost," July 18, 2011, by Laura Bonk, Margaret Hawthorne, and Carol Stamatikus, Concord Monitor Op-Ed Piece
To read the full article click HERE
"The Death Penalty and the Costs of an Obsession," July 11, 2011, E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post, Opinion
To read the full article click HERE
"Lynch Signs Cates Law," June 29, 2011, Dean Shalhoup, Nashua Telegraph
To read the full article click HERE
"Lynch Signs NH Death Penalty Bill," June 28, 2011, Norma Love, Boston Globe
To read the full article click HERE
"Struck by Lightning: The Continue Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty Thirty-Five Years After Its Re-instatement in 1976"- A report of the Death Penalty Information Center, by Richard C. Dieter, Executive Director
To read the press release click HERE
To read the full report click HERE
"Jeanne Woodford: ardent foe of the death penalty," May 29, 2011, Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer
To read the full article click HERE
St. Paul's School: Dead Man Walking Author Discusses Death Penalty with Students, May 19, 2011
“Torture,” Sister Helen Prejean told students in the Reading Room on May 19, “is an extreme mental or physical assault on a human being who has been rendered defenseless.”
To read more click HERE
BLOG: " No to Death; Not, Never...Period," by Representative Steve Vaillancourt, May 19, 2011
I suspect most who read this will disagree with what I have to say, but I have to say it, sort of a personal mea culpa.
When the history of this session of the New Hampshire House is written, replete with so many victories for fiscal conservatives like me, I will look back with great sadness and yes, I admit with some sense of real shame at what now seems inevitable, the expansion of the death penalty.
To read more click HERE
NH Death Penalty Expansion Opposed, by Arnie Alpert, American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
If legislators are really looking for expensive, ineffective government programs to eliminate, they can start with HB 147, the bill to add homicide committed in the course of a “home invasion” to the list of crimes punishable by execution.
A parade of speakers, including Sr. Helen Prejean and local clergy members, relatives of homicide victims, members of the Death Penalty Study Commission, Amnesty International members from Hanover High School, civil libertarians, and the former President of the NH Psychiatric Association drew on theology, psychology, human rights, and fiscal responsibility to clearly outline why the legislation takes the state in the wrong direction.
Margaret Hawthorn told the Senators about the murder of her daughter, Molly Hawthorne-MacDougall, in her own home last year. “Another death would only increase my family's trauma and would not bring Molly back. The bill being discussed today could make a case like hers capital because her murder happened in the contest of a home invasion.”
“Molly would not want anyone killed in her name,” Hawthorne said.
But the minority viewpoint in the room was a loud one; the death penalty expansion bill is sponsored by Speaker of the House William O’Brien, who represents the town of Mont Vernon, where the horrific murder of Kimberly Cates took place and who sees the bill as one of his top priorities. Prior to the hearing, O’Brien worked out amended language preferred by the Attorney General’s office to more clearly time the concept of “home invasion” to the crime of burglary. With that change, the bill will be supported, too, by Gov. John Lynch.
Larry Vogelman, an experienced defense attorney who served on last year’s Death Penalty Study Commission, explained that even though a slim majority of commissioners favored retaining the death penalty on the books, very few favored expansion. He also noted they were in agreement that the death penalty is far more expensive to administer than the likely alternative: treating crimes now covered under the capital murder statute as first degree murder, the penalty for which is a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment. At a time in which millions of dollars of cuts in services are being debated, one might expect a voice for fiscal responsibility to be welcomed. But that won’t happen unless Senators hear a louder outcry from constituents.
Opposition to the bill was organized by the NH Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, in which the AFSC is active.
Bill Expanding Death Penalty Revised, May 19, 2011, by Garry Rayno, Union Leader
To read the full article click HERE
Death Penalty Bill Revised, May 19, 2011, by Karen Langley, Concord Monitor
To read the full article click HERE
Death Penalty Change May Fit, May 19, 2011, by Kevin Landirgan, Nashua Telegraph
To read the full article click HERE
Time to Focus on Real Death Penalty Issues, May 6, 2011 Op-Ed piece by William L. Tuthill, CT. News Junkie
To read the full article click HERE
Co-Victims Against the Death Penalty, New York Times, April 29, 2011
To read the full article click HERE
Murder Victim's Sister Turns Tragedy into Cause For Hope, April 17, 2011, by Melanie Plendia, Sunday News Correspondent for the Union Leader
To read the full article click HERE
Death Penalty is a Budget-Buster; Op-Ed piece by Jack D'Aurora, The Columbus Dispatch, April 2, 2011
If Ohio and other states are truly interested in looking at all
possibilities for cutting budgets, they should shut down Death Row.
Last month, Illinois abolished the death penalty, joining 15 other states
and the District of Columbia. The path was laid in 2000 by then-Gov. George Ryan, who declared a moratorium on executions because of growing evidence that innocent people were being executed by the state, at least 20 by some counts.
If the possibility of killing innocent people isn't enough to prod
abolishing the death penalty, then perhaps the economics are. Since the
moratorium in Illinois ended, the state spent, according to the Chicago
Tribune, more than $120 million to send 15 more people to sit on Death Row, while their cases continued through the court system.
In Ohio, we have 157 offenders on Death Row. If we apply the cost figures from Illinois, Ohio has spent $1.2 billion to send those offenders to Death Row. Even if a simple extrapolation of cost figures doesn't produce
completely accurate numbers, the Illinois cost figures should give any
taxpayer cause to ponder the cost efficiency of the system.
The cost of capital punishment in Ohio is exemplified by Wilford Berry's
execution in 1999. Known as the "volunteer," Berry waived his right to
various post-trial proceedings and was the first offender executed after
Ohio reinstated capital punishment. The cost of his arrest, prosecution and
execution is reported at $1.5 million. Nine years passed between his
conviction and execution. Had Berry not "volunteered," it likely would have
taken another five to 10 years to execute him and substantially more money to get through the post-trial proceedings.
Studies indicate that capital cases cost more than life sentences without
parole. Capital-case trials are longer and more expensive; they involve
lengthier jury questioning, more expert witnesses are called and the cases
do not end with the limited appeals afforded all defendants. Primarily
because of the post-trial proceedings available only in capital cases,
incarcerating an offender for life likely costs less.
Fox News carried a story in March 2010 about the high cost of the death
penalty. "The cost of killing killers is killing us," was the theme. An
Urban Institute study pegged the cost of a single death-penalty trial at
$1.9 million more than trials not involving the death penalty. The Tennessee comptroller estimated that death-penalty cases cost 48 percent more, on the average. In Kansas, death-penalty trials were found to cost 70 percent more.
With Ohio's $8 billion deficit, eliminating the death penalty could be
another source of revenue savings. The resources we use to execute people could go elsewhere. Judge Boyce F. Martin Jr., of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, said it well: "[T]he choice to pay for the death penalty is a choice not to pay for other public goods, like roads, schools, parks, public works. ... So we need to ask whether the death penalty is worth what we are sacrificing to maintain it."
Add to that the fact that the criminal-justice system is subject to error.
We have plenty of examples where we have incarcerated the wrong person. Joseph Fears and Robert McClendon, exonerated by DNA evidence and released just a few years back, spent 25 years and 18 years behind bars, respectively, for rapes they did not commit. Timothy Howard and Gary James, released in 2003, served 16 years in prison for a bank robbery and murder they did not commit because evidence had been withheld at trial. These types of mistakes have to make us ponder whether everyone on Death Row belongs there.
Regrettably, Ohio has been setting the pace in executing offenders. Except
for Texas, Ohio executed more prisoners in 2010 than any other state in the union. Texas executed 17; Ohio executed 12.
Ohio reinstated the death penalty in 1981. What better time than this 30th
anniversary to re-evaluate whether the death penalty serves the public
interest? The overriding question is: Does the death penalty make sense? The expense is enormous, the death penalty delays closure and the system loses credibility when we do nothing about its faults. Former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens called for "a dispassionate, impartial comparison of the enormous costs that death-penalty litigation imposes on society with the benefits it produces."
Gov. John Kasich has encouraged us to think out of the box when it comes to cost-cutting. Here's an easy opportunity.
Jack D'Aurora is a practicing lawyer in Columbus.
Second thoughts of a 'hanging judge,' Op-Ed piece by Donald A. McCartin, Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2011
In 1978, the first time Jerry Brown was governor of California, he appointed me to a judgeship in the Superior Court of Orange County. It was a gutsy move on his part, a liberal Democrat naming a right-wing Republican to the bench. I served there until 1993, after which I sat on assignment on death cases throughout California.
During that time, I presided over 10 murder cases in which I sentenced the convicted men to die. As a result, I became known as "the hanging judge of Orange County," an appellation that, I will confess, I accepted with some pride.
The 10 were deemed guilty of horrifying crimes by their peers, and in the jurors' view as well as mine they deserved to die at the hands of the state. However, as of today, not one of them has been executed (though one died in prison of natural causes).
I am deeply angered by the fact that our system of laws has become so complex and convoluted that it makes mockery of decisions I once believed promised resolution for the family members of victims.
That said, I have followed the development of legal thinking and understand why our nation's Supreme Court, in holding that "death is different," has required that special care be taken to safeguard the rights of those sentenced to death. Such wisdom protects our society from returning to the barbarism of the past. And though I find it discomfiting and to a significant degree embarrassing that appellate courts have found fault with some of my statements, acts or decisions, I can live with the fact that their findings arise out of an attempt to ensure that the process has been scrupulously fair before such a sentence is carried out.
I can live with it and, apparently, so can the men I condemned. The first one, Rodney James Alcala, whom I sentenced to die more than 30 years ago for kidnapping and killing 12-year-old Robin Samsoe, was, just last year, again sentenced to death for killing Samsoe and four other young women who, it has subsequently been determined, were his victims around the same time.
I need not go into the permutations of Alcala's legal journey. Behind bars since 1979, he has not harmed, nor can he harm, any other young women. But harm has been done, and that's what infuriates me. Robin Samsoe's mother has been revictimized time and time again as the state of California spent millions upon millions of dollars in unsuccessful attempts to finally resolve the case against her daughter's murderer.
Had I known then what I know now, I would have given Alcala and the others the alternative sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. Had I done that, Robin's mother, Marianne, would have been spared the pain of 30 appeals and writs and retrial. She could have dealt then and there with the fact that her daughter's killer would be shut away, never again to see a day of freedom, and gone on to put her life together. And the people of California would have not have had to pay many millions of tax dollars in this meaningless and ultimately fruitless pursuit of death.
It makes me angry to have been made a player in a system so inefficient, so ineffective, so expensive and so emotionally costly.
I watch today as Gov. Brown wrestles with the massive debt that is suffocating our state and hear him say he doesn't want to "play games." But I cringe when I learn that not playing games amounts to cuts to kindergarten, cuts to universities, cuts to people with special needs — and I hear no mention of the simple cut that would save hundreds of millions of dollars, countless man-hours, unimaginable court time and years of emotional torture for victim's family members waiting for that magical sense of "closure" they've been falsely promised with death sentences that will never be carried out.
There is actually, I've come to realize, no such thing as "closure" when a loved one is taken. What family members must find is reconciliation with the reality of their loss, and that can begin the minute the perpetrator is sent to a prison he will never leave. But to ask them to endure the years of being dragged through the courts in pursuit of the ultimate punishment is a cruel lie.
It's time to stop playing the killing game. Let's use the hundreds of millions of dollars we'll save to protect some of those essential services now threatened with death. Let's stop asking people like me to lie to those victim's family members.
The governor doesn't have the power to end the death penalty by himself, but he can point the way. He could have a huge financial impact on California by following the lead of Illinois and commuting the sentences of the more than 700 men and women on California's death row to life without parole.
Donald A. McCartin is a retired Superior Court judge.
Gil Garcetti: California's Death Penalty Doesn't Serve Justice, Op-Ed piece, Los Angeles Times, March 25, 2011. Read it Here
New Hampshire State Representative Steve Winter of District 3 Speaks Out on the Death Penalty, March 15, 2011
"Society may protect itself without putting a human to death as it would a wild animal. Since we believe each person has a soul and is capable of achieving salvation, life in prison is now an alternative to the death penalty." – Richard Viguerie, Tea Party supporter
Since the early days of my political involvement in the early 1990s, I have been against the death penalty. Our government was created to protect us from foreign aggression, protect us from the criminals amongst us, and to protect and guarantee our liberties. It was not created to exact revenge.
There are two bills in the NH House expanding the death penalty, HB 147 and HB 162. One has to do with the circumstances of the Mont Vernon home invasion and murder while the other extends the death penalty to those who assassinate high political figures. My long-time friend, Speaker of the House Bill O’Brien, is the prime sponsor of HB 147. He lives in Mont Vernon and I can certainly understand his motivation in seeing this bill through.
But for what purpose do we kill others? Is it primarily for revenge? "An eye for an eye" went out with the advent of the New Testament and Sharia Law is not the law of this land. If our government is created to protect our safety, I believe that life in prison without any possibility of parole is sufficient to meet that goal.
But isn’t the death penalty a deterrent? Not according to most inmate observers. "I have never heard a murderer say they thought about the death penalty as consequence of their actions prior to committing their crimes," said Gregory Ruff, a police lieutenant in Kansas.
As a fiscal conservative, I look also at costs. There are many studies which show that it is more expensive to put a criminal to death than to warehouse him for life. Lifetime incarceration certainly satisfies our need to be protected from any of that criminal’s anti-socialism for his lifetime. We don’t need to degrade ourselves or our culture by perpetrating ritual death.
Looking at the issue as a matter of punishment, I believe if I were 20 years old and convicted of the Mont Vernon murders, I would rather be put to death than to look forward to my remaining 50 or more years behind bars, never seeing freedom or having any hope of freedom. That would be a living hell.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens said, "I think this country would be much better off if we did not have capital punishment. We cannot ignore the fact that in recent years a disturbing number of inmates on death row have been exonerated." He’s right. If we mistakenly put to death just one innocent individual we have, as a society, committed premeditated murder.
Finally, again as a conservative, I have long advocated for a government that is smaller and less powerful over our lives. What more power can we bestow on government than the power to take the life of a citizen?
**Steven Winter represents the towns of Newbury and Sutton, Merrimack District 3, in the NH House of Representatives. Representative Winter is a member of the House Executive Department & Administration Committee and the Joint Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules (JLCAR)
DEA Inspects Georgia's Lethal Injection Drug, March 16, 2011
The Associated Press issued a newsbreak on March 15, 2011, regarding a major inspection by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on Georgia’s supply of sodium thiopental, which is one of three parts of lethal injections used in executions. The DEA confiscated and will conduct an inspection on Georgia’s Department of Corrections supply of the drug because there were questions and concerns that developed regarding how the supply of sodium thiopental was imported into the United States. Official documents were released revealing that the same supply of drugs that was used to recently execute Emmanuel Hammond and Roy Willard Blankenship, were obtained from a “fly-by-night supplier operating from the back of a driving school in England.” There is speculation that the drug could have been counterfeit. There has been a shortage of the drug in the U.S., which may bring us to question how these drugs are being obtained and how long have these drugs been sitting in their stockpile.
Defense attorneys are concerned that Correctional facilities across the nation are purchasing drugs like sodium thiopental off the black market and administering these drugs during executions. When the states’ Department of Corrections decides to make an executive decision to take shortcuts and not comply with regulations, there are serious risks and consequences involved. The risk of using counterfeit or even expired drugs may cause unnecessary pain and extreme suffering. We hope that Georgia’s case opens doors to inspect other states that have had to purchase sodium thiopental from England due to the shortage of the drug here in the U.S., and we hope it sends a greater message to the public that the procedures that go into performing an execution are unsafe, costly, and impractical.
Don't Expand Death Penalty Out of Rage, Op-Ed Piece on Seacoast Online, by Barbara Keshen , March 15, 2011
Don't Expand Death Penalty Out of Rage, Op-Ed Piece on Seacoast Online, by Barbara Keshen , March 15, 2011
Don't Expand Death Penalty Out of Rage, Op-Ed Piece on Seacoast Online, by Barbara Keshen , March 15, 2011
Don't Expand Death Penalty Out of Rage, Op-Ed Piece on Seacoast Online, by Barbara Keshen , March 15, 2011
New Hampshire is moving in the wrong direction on the death penalty and it is moving there fast.
New Hampshire is moving in the wrong direction on the death penalty and it is moving there fast.
New Hampshire is moving in the wrong direction on the death penalty and it is moving there fast.
At a time when many states are repealing death penalty laws because too many innocent people are being sent to death, a New Hampshire House Committee voted last week to expand the state's existing narrow death penalty law to include murders committed during home invasions.
This death penalty expansion was proposed by House Speaker William O'Brien in direct response to the 2009 murder of Kimberly Cates in her Mont Vernon home.
The brutal murder of Cates and the vicious attack on her daughter make us yearn for revenge. We want to punish the monstrous young men who dared commit this atrocity on an innocent mother and child. Somehow we feel that revenge will restore the balance of justice in the world.
But it won't.
As the great Indian leader Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi noted: "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."
The House Committee has passed this law because it is blind with rage.
We understand the rage but reject the idea that the monstrous behavior of some sociopathic teenagers should cause the state to seek more opportunities to kill in the name of justice.
New Hampshire last put a man to death under death penalty laws in 1939. Since that time, the law has been narrowed to apply almost exclusively to the killing of a law enforcement officer in the line of duty.
While we disagree with the death penalty in any form, we understand that some officers feel the death penalty offers them some protection as they place themselves in harm's way to keep us safe.
Michael Addison is on death row today for the 2006 murder of Manchester police officer Michael Briggs. The existing law didn't protect Briggs as it has not protected many officers who have tragically been killed in the line of duty in states with death penalty laws. That said, it's hard to deny this perceived protection to officers who are putting their lives on the line to keep the public safe.
The New Hampshire Death Penalty Study Commission did an excellent job between October 2009 and December 2010 exploring all aspects of this highly charged issue. It was an excellent commission with representatives from law enforcement, families of murder victims, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and mental health advocates. In the end, the commission voted to support the existing law, to continue sentencing to death those who kill law enforcement officers in the line of duty.
Robert "Renny" Cushing, executive director of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, served on the study commission. His father was shot to death outside his Hampton home two decades ago. While disappointed with the final vote Cushing expressed respect and gratitude to all commission members.
In a letter dated Dec. 1, 2010, Cushing, who is a member of the Hampton Union editorial board's community advisory board, wrote: "I served on the commission with two other family members of murder victims: Bob Charron, whose son Officer Jeremy Charron was murdered in Epsom in 1997, and Brad Whitney, whose father Eli Whitney was murdered in 2001. Although we ended up disagreeing about the death penalty, their presence on the Commission was important to me. At times when a witness or a member of the Commission would embark on an explanation of legal intricacies or the theories and arcane points about statistical analysis, I would get a sense that somehow the reality of the murder of real people was getting lost in the process. It was good to know I was not the only person in the room who felt in his gut that this was not just a theoretical discussion."
The death penalty is too important an issue to tackle when we are still feeling rage over a horrible crime. Our sense of justice has been dealt a blow by the murder of Kimberly Cates, and we want to strike back. But we should control ourselves and think before we take another step in the wrong direction.
"At the end of the day, the death penalty is not about those who kill, it is about us," Cushing wrote. "We, as a society, become what we say we abhor, killers. I don't want the state killing in my name."
We strongly agree with Cushing and urge lawmakers not to seek speedy vengeance.
Quinn Signs Death Penalty Ban, Commutes 15 Death Row Sentences to Life, Chicago Tribune, March 09, 2011
Quinn Signs Death Penalty Ban, Commutes 15 Death Row Sentences to Life, Chicago Tribune, March 09, 2011
SPRINGFIELD — Gov. Pat Quinn today signed into law a historic ban on the death penalty in Illinois and commuted the sentences of 15 death row inmates to life without parole.
SPRINGFIELD — Gov. Pat Quinn today signed into law a historic ban on the death penalty in Illinois and commuted the sentences of 15 death row inmates to life without parole.
The governor said he followed his conscience. He said he believed in signing the bill he also should "abolish the death penalty for everyone," including those already on death row.
"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history," Quinn told reporters afterward. “I think it’s the right, just thing to abolish the death penalty.”
Quinn signed the legislation during a private ceremony in his Capitol office surrounded by longtime opponents of capital punishment in a state where flaws in the process led to the exoneration of numerous people sentenced to death.
"For me, this was a difficult decision, quite literally the choice between life and death," Quinn wrote in his signing statement. "This was not a decision to be made lightly, or a decision that I came to without deep personal reflection."
"For the same reason, I have also decided to commute the sentences of those currently on death row to natural life imprisonment, without the possibility of parole or release," the governor wrote.
A small group of lawmakers also was on hand, including lead sponsors Rep. Karen Yarbrough, D-Maywood, and Sen. Kwame Raoul, D-Chicago. Senate President John Cullerton, D-Chicago, and House Majority Leader Barbara Flynn Currie, D-Chicago also attended. Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon, who lobbied Quinn to sign the ban, was there.
The ban comes about 11 years after then-Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions after 13 condemned inmates were cleared since Illinois reinstated capital punishment in 1977. Ryan, a Republican, cited a Tribune investigative series that examined each of the state's nearly 300 capital cases and exposed how bias, error and incompetence undermined many of them.
Since then, Illinois approved reforms to the capital punishment system, including taping interrogations under a proposal forged by President Barack Obama when he served in the Illinois Senate. Only two days before leaving office in January 2003, Ryan commuted the death sentences of 164 prisoners to life in prison. Quinn and his predecessor, Rod Blagojevich, kept the moratorium in place.
In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down death penalty statutes in 40 states, including Illinois. Five years later, Illinois reinstated capital punishment, and it has been among the 35 states that currently allow executions. Illinois could join New York, New Jersey and New Mexico, all of which have done away with the death penalty in the last three years.
The death penalty ban would take effect July 1.
Quinn did not have to immediately act on the 15 death row inmates, but chose to commute their sentences to life in prison. Quinn addressed his action during his news conference.
“There are no words in the English language, or any language, to ease your pain,” he said of murder victims’ families who opposed the move. “I want to tell them, it’s impossible, I’m sure, to ever be healed. But we want to tell all of the family members, the family of Illinois…we want to be with you. You’re not alone in your grief.”
One of those whose sentence was commuted is Brian Dugan, sentenced to death for the 1983 rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico, of Naperville. Dugan had been serving two life sentences for two other rape-murder cases, but his death sentence brought a major chapter of a long-running, controversial case to a close. Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez — two of three men originally charged with the girl's murder — served years on death row before they were cleared.
As Quinn campaigned for governor last fall, he held firm to the moratorium as a way to see how well the reforms are working. The governor also said he supported the death penalty for the worst crimes.
Today, Quinn offered a different perspective.
"I have found no credible evidence that the death penalty has a deterrent effect on the crime of murder and that the enormous sums expended by the state in maintaining a death penalty system would be better spent on preventing crime and assisting victims' families in overcoming pain and grief," he wrote.
Quinn made his decision after an intense lobbying effort. He said he read the late Cardindal Joseph Bernardin's book, a "Gift of Peace," and also read the Bible as he came to the decision.
"Since the General Assembly passed this bill, I have met or heard from a wide variety of people on both sides of the issue, " Quinn wrote in his signing statement.
"I have talked with prosecutors, judges, elected officialas, religious leaders from around the world, families of murder victims, people on death row who were exonerated and ordinary citizens who have taken the time to share their thoughts with me.
"Their experiences, words and opinions have made a tremendous impact on my thinking, and I thank everyone who reached out on this matter.
"After their guidance, as well as much thought and reflection, I have concluded that our system of imposing the death penalty is inherently flawed."
He said evidence presented him by prosecutors and judges "with decades of experience in the criminal justice system has convinced me that it is impossible to devise a system that is consistent, that is free of discrimination on the basis of race, geography or economic circumstance and that always gets it right."
Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and other prosecutors urged Quinn to veto the ban and take a hard-line stance to keep the death penalty.
The governor also heard from anti-death-penalty luminaries including South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Sister Helen Prejean, a New Orleans nun whose time spent with a condemned inmate became the basis for the movie "Dead Man Walking."
Family members of murder victims also made emotional pleas. Among them was Cindy McNamara, whose daughter, Shannon, was murdered in 2001 while attending Eastern Illinois University.
Shannon McNamara was asleep in her locked off-campus apartment when she was raped, strangled, beaten and stabbed. Her body was left in the living room. A washcloth was stuffed in her mouth.
Former EIU student Anthony Mertz was convicted, becoming the first person sent to death row after Ryan emptied it.
"We have the death penalty for a reason," Cindy McNamara wrote in a letter to Quinn. "This is the reason!"
The Tribune examination found at least 46 inmates sent to death row in cases where prosecutors used jailhouse informants to convict or condemn the defendants. The investigation also found at least 33 death row inmates had been represented at trial by an attorney who had been disbarred or suspended; at least 35 African-American inmates on death row who had been convicted or condemned by an all-white jury; and about half of the nearly 300 capital cases had been reversed for a new trial or sentencing hearing.
A Culture of Life in New Hampshire, Op-Ed piece in the Union Leader, by The Most Reverend John B. McCormack, D.D, Bishop of Manchester and The Most Reverend Francis J. Christian, D.D., Auxiliary Bishop of Manchester, February 2, 2011
The New Hampshire House of Representatives soon will consider two bills, HB 147 and HB 162, which seek to expand the death penalty in our state. As Catholic bishops, and as citizens of New Hampshire, we urge the members of the House to vote against these bills.
Like other citizens of our state, our hearts are broken by the inconceivable and monstrous crimes which prompted these bills. We pray for the victims and their families; we honor the bravery and nobility of the police officers; and we, too, seek a just punishment for the guilty. However, we believe that just punishment should not involve the taking of yet another life.
It was surely no accident that “life” was the first of the inalienable rights affirmed by our nation’s Declaration of Independence. The right to life is the foundation of all the human rights we possess. Unfortunately, in our time, the value of human life and human dignity is constantly under attack. During the century we just concluded, we saw war and bloodshed on a scale never before witnessed in human history. We live in a culture where the taking of the most innocent of lives - those of unborn children in the womb - is tolerated, made legal, and even encouraged and a world where the elderly and infirm are subtly encouraged not to be a drain on their families or society.
In the face of all this, it is evident that to restore what Pope John Paul II called a “culture of life,” our society ought to employ the strongest measures available. One of the measures available is the restriction and eventual abolition of the death penalty.
By no means does this assertion of the respect for the life of criminals minimize the requirement that justice be done to them through proportionate punishment, nor does it dissolve the distinction between innocence and guilt. Indeed, the abolition of the death penalty does not jeopardize our state’s ability to protect people from dangerous criminals, as we have available to us the sentence of life without the possibility of parole (which the minority report of the Commission to Study the Death Penalty in New Hampshire referred to as “death by incarceration”). Instead, our state’s refusal to kill capital offenders would be a sign of the state’s confident moral integrity, not of its weakness to govern and protect.
When the state ends a human life although a non-lethal alternative exists, it suggests that society can end violence with more violence. We know that this is not the case. As Pope Benedict XVI has said:
Killing the guilty one is not the way to rebuild justice and reconcile society. On the contrary, there is the risk that the spirit of revenge is fueled and that the seeds of new violence are sown.
We therefore should end the use of the death penalty, not only for what it does to those who are executed, but for what it does to all of society.
By having the courage and rectitude to spare the lives of those who are demonstrably guilty and, instead, imprison them for life, we develop and support a culture appreciative and protective of the value of every human person. By refusing to expand the death penalty in this state, we proclaim a moral goodness that moves beyond the influence of reaction to chilling crimes and toward a civil ethic that respects the intrinsic value of every human person from conception to natural death. For these reasons, HB 147 and HB 162 should not become law.
Finally, in the midst of all our discussion on legislation, let us never fail to express our support for the families and friends of victims of terrible crimes. Let us show our gratitude and appreciation for members of law enforcement who bring criminals to justice. Let us all as, Pope John Paul II challenged, commit to live as “people of life and for life.”Still Cruel, Less Usual Editorial in the New York Times , December 30, 2010
The tide continued ebbing on the death penalty this year. States are putting fewer people to death, and juries continue to favor the punishment of life without parole over execution when given the choice. A report released this month by the Death Penalty Information Center counted 46 executions in 2010. That is nearly 12 percent fewer than a year ago, and down sharply from the 85 executions of 2000.
Forty-six state-committed killings are 46 too many, but the drop was even felt in Texas, by far the national leader in executions. It killed 17 prisoners this year, 29 percent fewer than last year. The center, which opposes the death penalty, found that while juries imposed about the same number of death sentences this year as last — 114 in 2010, 112 in 2009 — that rate was still only about half what it was in the 1990s.
The center suggested a number of reasons for the decline, including that prosecutors and the public are grappling with the wrenching problem of innocence. The irreversible punishment of death requires a foolproof justice system, but growing numbers of DNA exonerations in recent years suggest that it is far from that.
What tempers the results is that some of the reluctance had nothing to do with enlightenment. Death rows and executions are expensive, and cash-strapped states seem more willing to investigate alternatives. And executions were postponed or canceled this year in Arkansas, California, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Kentucky simply because of a shortage of a lethal-injection drug.
Still there was good news in 2010. Electoral victories by candidates who oppose the death penalty, like the new governors of California and New York and the re-elected governor of Massachusetts, suggest that it’s not a voters’ litmus test or political third rail.
A judge in a state court in Texas, of all places, granted a hearing this month on whether the state’s capital-punishment law is unconstitutional because of the high risk of executing the innocent. While the hearing has been temporarily halted, prominent former governors, prosecutors and legislators have urged that it continue. And in an essay this month in The New York Review of Books, John Paul Stevens, the retired Supreme Court justice, argued that capital punishment was neither fair nor an effective deterrent.
We can only hope the country is closer to putting its shameful experiment in state-sponsored death behind it.
Ray Duckler, Monitor Columnist, March 13, 2010
Bob Curley wasn't always against the death penalty.
But he is now.
It doesn't matter that his 10-year-old son, Jeffrey, was killed, then sexually abused, 13 years ago. It doesn't matter that Curley still wakes up every so often and thinks about killing the killers, Salvatore Sicari and Charles Jaynes. And it doesn't matter that his ex-wife and their two sons believe in the death penalty.
"After what happened with Jeff, I don't see how I could feel any other way than being in favor of the death penalty," Curley said yesterday. "But after a period of time . . . that changed."
Curley is a 54-year-old firefighter from Cambridge, Mass. He came to Concord yesterday to address the Death Penalty Study Commission, which is researching whether capital punishment, on the books in New Hampshire, makes more sense than life without parole.
The committee and some invited to speak were longwinded, forcing Curley to leave without speaking after 2½ hours so he could get to work on time.
Too bad. Curley had plenty to say, at least outside the meeting room; he spoke in calm, measured tones, not much louder than a whisper.
He sees discrimination in our court system based on race and money, with some criminals receiving the death penalty and others life in prison.
"You find out very quickly it's a great system, but it's not always fair," Curley said. "If you have money and can afford to go to court with a good defense lawyer, you have a better chance than some guy that doesn't."
He learned these inequities the hard way, after the murder of his son.
Jeffrey loved baseball. He loved going to dad's office, the fire station, and climbing on the trucks.
"He was a funny little kid who liked to have a good time," Curley said. "He was a city kid growing up in East Cambridge. He was funny and outgoing and liked mechanical things. He liked to hang out with the guys at the firehouse. He was kind of a showoff, a good kid."
On Oct. 1, 1997, Jeffrey was lured away from his neighborhood by Sicari and Jaynes, who promised him a new bike.
They smothered Jeffrey with a gasoline-soaked rag, sexually abused him, then stuffed his body into a concrete-filled container and dumped him in a Maine river.
News stations began showing a picture of Jeffrey in his blue Little League uniform, a bat resting on his right shoulder. Divers found him six days later.
"Prior to that I think I was like most people, never gave the death penalty much thought," Curley said. "One way or the other, whatever way the wind blows. Yeah, there should be the death penalty when you hear something horrible happened, and the other way around when you hear someone was wrongly convicted."
His opinion on the death penalty when Sicari and Jaynes were convicted?
"I wanted them dead," Curley said.
His opinion, though, began shifting two or three years after Jeffrey's death. Curley read about Manny Babbitt, who had been wounded in Vietnam and was considered a war hero. Babbitt, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, killed a California woman in 1980 and was executed by lethal injection in 1999.
And then there was Harvard graduate Ted Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. His mail bombs between 1978 and '95 killed three and wounded 23. He's serving a life sentence without parole.
"The poor black man Manny Babbitt gets executed, and the white educated guy from Harvard gets life," Curley said. "That was the defining moment for me."
Curley also cited the men who killed his son. Jaynes gagged Jeffrey, leading to his death, then sexually assaulted him; Sicari drove the car. Yet Jaynes was convicted of second-degree murder, with parole possible, and Sicari of first-degree murder.
Curley said he knows why.
Jaynes "hired a good defense lawyer," Curley said. "(Sicari), who was a tagalong stooge, got life without the possibility of parole. That stood out to me, how the system plays out."
Has money played a role in sentencing here, in New Hampshire? What about race?
Michael Addison killed Manchester police Officer Michael Briggs in 2006 and was sentenced to death in late 2008. John Brooks was convicted on two counts of capital murder in 2008 and is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Addison is poor and black, Brooks a white millionaire whose legal team was the best money could buy.
The murder Brooks committed was planned, but Addison killed a cop. Who deserved what? You make the call.
Meanwhile, Curley's crusade for justice in our system is limited, although he traveled to Geneva two weeks ago to speak at the World Congress Against the Death Penalty. "They invited me," he said, "so I went."
He throws himself into his work these days. He's got two sons, 31-year-old Robert, a pipe fitter, and 29-year-old Shaun, a carpenter. He and his wife have divorced since the death of their son. Curley said the killing had nothing to do with the split.
"I'm fine, relatively speaking," Curley said, adding a subtle laugh. "It's crazy, but I really feel Jeff died for a reason, to highlight a lot of different things as far as sexual abuse of kids and things that are wrong in the world. I try to live in a dignified way and carry Jeffrey's memory."
Curley then paused for at least five seconds, choking back tears and collecting his thoughts on yesterday's hearing.
"This," he said finally, "is bigger than me."
Conservatives Work for Death Penalty Repeal, Washington Post, January 18, 2010 Here
Judge Nadeau Speaks Out Against the Death PenaltyJudge Nadeau, a former NH Supreme Court Justice, recently spoke out against the death penalty at the June Study Commission hearing. He also wrote an Opinion on this subject for Foster's Daily Democrat. That article can be viewed HERE.
Some responses to the article can be viewed HERE.
Andru Volinsky's "My Turn" Piece in the Concord Monitor Here
Renny Cushing's "My Turn" Piece in the Concord Monitor, June 10, 2009 Here
Richard Viguerie Speaks Out on the Death Penalty
Conservative leader Richard Viguerie recently provided an Op Ed on the death penalty. Read it HERE.Death Penalty Hurts - Not Helps - Victims
Read Kathy Garcia's Guest Editorial in the Nashua Telegraph.
Coming soon...
