Recent Death Penalty News
DEATH ROW INMATE DIES OF NATURAL CAUSES, By Carol J. Williams L.A. Times, 2/1809,
Thomas Francis Edwards, 65, was convicted of the 1981 killing of a 12-year-old Orange County girl. 'Justice hasn't been served but at least there will be no more appeals,' victim's father says.
The killer of a 12-year-old Orange County girl who has spent 22 years fighting execution has died on death row, escaping what the victim's father termed "the justice the world deserved."
Thomas Francis Edwards, 65, died of natural causes Saturday at San Quentin State Prison's medical facility, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation reported Monday.
Edwards was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 shooting of Vanessa Iberri in Cleveland National Forest, where the girl and a friend, Kelly Cartier, were on a camping trip with Iberri's mother. Cartier also was shot but survived.
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NEW NETWORK LAUNCHED TO MOBILIZE CATHOLICS AGAINST DEATH PENALTY
By Nancy Frazier O'Brien, Catholic News Service
HARRISBURG, Pa. (CNS) -- The Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Death Penalty, launched Jan. 25 in Harrisburg, is not just another initiative of the bishops but instead represents lay Catholics at the grass-roots level "taking up the challenge" put forth in bishops' documents, statements and actions over the past three decades.
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STATE DECIDES TO SEEK PUBLIC INPUT ON EXECUTION PLAN, By Howard Mintz, San Jose Mercury News, 1.06.09
California officials have abandoned a legal fight over their bid to secretly overhaul the state's execution method, a move that sends the issue back to square one and leaves San Quentin's newly constructed execution chamber idled for the foreseeable future.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration decided not to appeal November's ruling by a state appeals court, which found that prison officials failed to follow proper administrative procedures when they attempted to revise California's lethal injection method without any public input. State lawyers had until Dec. 31 to appeal to the state Supreme Court, but have decided instead to follow the administrative rules and put the execution plan through public review, likely including public hearings.
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TWO LAWMAKERS TEAM UP TO OPPOSE NEW DEATH ROW By Bob Egelko, S.F. Chronicle, 12.17.08
Two legislators from opposing parties and with opposite views on the death penalty joined Tuesday to propose cutting off funding for a new $395 million Death Row at San Quentin, calling it a boondoggle that a financially strapped state can't afford.
"The Death Row expansion is a bottomless money pit," said state Sen. Jeff Denham, R-Atwater (Merced County).
"We should use this opportunity, with the state running out of cash, to step back and rethink this project," said Assemblyman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, who joined Denham at a news conference in front of the aging Marin County prison. He referred to the project as a "Cadillac Death Row" and said many condemned inmates could be safely housed at other prisons during their decades of appeals
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APPELLATE COURT KEEPS CALIFORNIA EXECUTIONS ON HOLD, By DENNY WALSH, Sacramento Bee 11.25.08
There will be no executions by California in the near future.
An appellate court has ruled the state failed to follow required procedures in fashioning a revised protocol for administering lethal injections.
The revised protocol was not vetted through a period of public notice and comment, as required by the state's Administrative Procedures Act, a three-judge panel of the 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco ruled Friday.
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's failure to comply invalidated the protocol, the panel concluded.
The ruling leaves the state with two options: send the protocol through the notice and comment process or appeal to the California Supreme Court, which may or may not agree to review the matter.
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COURT ISSUES STAY OF EXECUTION FOR TROY DAVIS, By BILL RANKIN, RHONDA COOK
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 10. 24.2008
The federal appeals court in Atlanta on Friday stayed the execution of Troy Anthony Davis, who was scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection... Earlier this week, Davis asked the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for permission to pursue another round of appeals in federal court on claims he is actually innocent. ...On Friday, the court said the stay of execution is conditional. Davis must make a showing he can meet the "stringent requirements" to pursue another round of appeals...
The court directed Davis' lawyers to file a legal brief on their arguments within 15 days. The state Attorney General's Office has another 10 days to respond
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DEATH ROW REALISM: Do executions make us safer? San Quentin's former warden says no. By Jeanne Woodford, L.A. Times, 10/2/08
As the warden of San Quentin, I presided over four executions. After each one, someone on the staff would ask, "Is the world safer because of what we did tonight?"
We knew the answer: No.
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Appeals court to consider state's death penalty gridlock, SMALL STEP IN BATTLE OVER LETHAL INJECTION By Howard Mintz, Mercury News, 09/18/2008
Five months after the U.S. Supreme Court offered a legal road map to states dealing with challenges to lethal injection, California is no closer to resuming executions on the nation's largest death row.
Today, however, the legal battle over lethal injection in this state will finally inch forward when an appeals court in San Francisco considers one of the two cases paralyzing California's death penalty machinery. While the hearing will not catapult the standoff over lethal injection in the state to a conclusion, it is a first step toward kick-starting a legal showdown that will decide whether the state's execution method can pass muster in the courts.
In particular, the 1st District Court of Appeal will hear arguments in the state's appeal of a Marin judge's order last fall that found that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration broke state rules when it adopted new lethal injection procedures. If the judge's order holds up, it could force the state to go back to the drawing board and hold public hearings before it can establish a new execution protocol.
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DEATH ROW COST OVERRUN: $40 MILLION, New San Quentin housing also could run out of room, report says, by Matthew Yi, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau, July 30, 2008
The cost of new housing for San Quentin State Prison's growing number of Death Row inmates will exceed estimates by nearly $40 million, and the compound could run out of space soon after it is completed, according to a state auditor's report released Tuesday.
The auditor's new $395.5 million price tag for the project, which is expected to be completed by 2011, is new bad news for a state facing billions of dollars in budget shortfalls. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Democrat-controlled Legislature are still trying to hammer out a spending plan for the fiscal year that began nearly a month ago.
California's prison system is already a big-ticket item, representing about 10 percent of roughly $100 billion general fund spending. And with severe inmate overcrowding and claims of inadequate health care for prisoners, a federal receiver appointed by a judge in 2006 has asked the Legislature for an additional $7 billion to get the prison system to run adequately.
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