Oct. 10, 2007 (2 articles)

Pennsylvania

In Pa., we can't even kill people properly

John Baer, Philadelphia Daily News

AS IF Pennsylvania doesn't have enough to do to improve the care of its
citizens - crime prevention, road and bridge repair, legislative reform,
health-care reform, ethics reforms, tax reform and more - now comes word we
don't even do the death penalty right.

A state known for sorry-*** showings in national studies on multiple topics
shows up as downright awful in an American Bar Association assessment of how
we use capital punishment.

Basically, we have crappy procedures putting innocents at risk, we have
stupid juries, we're unfair to the poor and we're racist.

Sound about right?

The official finding: "Pennsylvania cannot ensure that fairness and accuracy
are the hallmark of every case in which the death penalty is sought or
imposed."

Which means innocents could die, but maybe that isn't all that unsettling if
you understand that

we're not rushing to put people to death.

Pennsylvania has executed only three - all white - since its death penalty
was reinstated 30 years ago. The last was Philly torturer-killer Gary
Heidnik in '99, which I remember well. I was there as a media witness.

We have 228 on death row, fourth nationally behind California, Florida and
hang-'em-high Texas.

The ABA, which 10 years ago called for a national moratorium on the death
penalty, has done assessments of eight states with large death rows;
Pennsylvania was the last.

Our assessment, honchoed by a Villanova law professor and former federal
prosecutor, Anne Bowen Poulin, was released yesterday.

Among its findings are strong suggestions of uneven and unfair use of the
death sentence, especially if you're African-American from Philly.

Findings include: Despite exonerating five death row inmates since the
mid-'70s, the state fails to tighten procedures to protect the innocent; it
doesn't keep biological evidence for the duration of imprisonment; it has
sloppy line-ups that can lead to false eyewitness IDs, and it doesn't tape
or record all capital-case interrogations.

The report also says the state fails to provide funding for lawyers for the
poor, relying solely on county funding, resulting in a lack of "quality,
uniform representation" for many; it provides little defense against bad
defense, and it denies adequate resources for experts and investigators.

The report blasts juries and, by implication, those who empanel and instruct
them. The "overwhelming majority" of capital- case jurors don't understand
their responsibilities in death-penalty cases.

Comforting, no?

On race, the ABA punts to a 1999 state Supreme Court committee on racial and
gender bias and its findings: though minorities make up just 11 percent of
the state population, they make up 68 percent of death row, well above the
national average and, in terms of blacks, second only to Louisiana.

The committee also said that Philly blacks get the death penalty more than
nonblacks in similar cases: "The committee found that one third of
African-American death-row inmates in Philadelphia County would have
received sentences of life imprisonment if they had not been
African-American."

Since that finding, little is changed. The ABA suggests further study.

When I ask ABA president-elect H. Thomas Wells Jr., of Birmingham, Ala.,
what the multistate assessments show most in common, he says it's poor legal
representation for the indigent.

So poor people don't get the best lawyers and black people get screwed. When
I suggest such is the case throughout the history of American jurisprudence,
and ask why nothing's ever done about it, he says, "Well, that's a good
question . . . at least we're drawing attention to it."

So I draw it to your attention. And I expect corrective change just as soon
as we get better crime prevention, health-care reform, legislative reform,
ethics reform . . . *

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Source : Philadelphia Daily News (Send e-mail to baerj@phillynews.com.)

http://www.philly.com/dailynews/colu...John_Baer___In
_Pa___we_cant_even_kill_people_properly.html


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Oct. 10, 2007

No more Lethal Injections

by Anam Moin Khan, TechNews

The human right organization, Amnesty International is calling forward the
doctors and nurses of the world to refuse to execute prisoners using lethal
injections on the basis that the practice is a breach of their ethical code.
In this process a lethal drug is injected into the prisoners body which
leads to his death; before giving this shot, the prison is anesthetized. In
a new report, Amnesty said some doctors have expressed concern that
prisoners can experience "excruciating" pain as they die if the anesthetic
wears off before their hearts stop.

"There is a global consensus within the medical profession that the
involvement of health professionals in carrying out an execution,
particularly by a method using the technology and knowledge of medicine, is
a breach of medical ethics, yet health professionals are participating in
such executions," said Jim Welsh, Amnesty's health and human rights
coordinator.
Since 1982, 919 people have been killed in the States using this method of
injecting the prisoner with a lethal drug. This number may be manifold
higher in China; a country where this practice is frequently used and no
official record is ever given out.

This report on the use of lethal drugs has come into focus after the US
Supreme Court, last week decided to hear the case of two men on death row
who argue that the procedure is unconstitutional. Amnesty cited the case of
double murderer Joseph Clark, executed in Ohio in the US last year, whose
execution took nearly 90 minutes. He cried out "it don't work, it don't
work" as technicians struggled to find a vein.

Amnesty International plans on using doctor's research and Joseph Clark's
execution to depict how inhumane the practice is and getting it abolished.
There main objective in the long run is to get death row eliminated from the
constitution all together.

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Source : TechNews

TechNews