Missourians gather to call for death penalty moratorium
By: Marty Denzer
THE CATHOLIC KEY, 02/29/2008
JEFFERSON CITY - As the sun rose over the Missouri State Capitol dome on a bitterly cold Feb. 20, school buses rolled in from Kansas City and St. Louis filled with people wanting to lend their voices to the call for a moratorium on the death penalty in Missouri. Cars loaded with people from all over the state joined them. More than 150 people, young and old, gathered in the lower level of the Capitol building's rotunda to lobby for a death penalty study and multi-year moratorium on executions. Recently Missouri State Representative Bill Deekin (R-Jefferson City) introduced House Bill 1870 calling for a two-year moratorium on executions and a study on the impact of different sentences upon murder victims' families. The bill is co-sponsored by 14 republicans and 43 democrats, including 19 representatives from the Kansas City area.
A similar bill, Senate Bill 800, sponsored by State Senator Rita Heard-Days (D-St. Louis) calls for a three-year moratorium and study.
There has not been an execution in Missouri, one of 35 states that allow the death penalty, since 2005. Death row inmate Michael Taylor was to have been executed by lethal injection in February 2006, but was granted a stay of execution based on his claim that the method of execution was cruel and unusual punishment. U.S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan suspended the state's death penalty in June 2006, reasoning that Missouri's lethal injection protocol did not satisfy the Eighth Amendment because the written procedures for implementing lethal injections were too vague and there was no qualified anesthesiologist to perform the lethal injections.
In June 2007, a three-judge panel of the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Gaitan's decision, saying the method used in Missouri was constitutional, and the decision was upheld by the entire Eighth Circuit. The court held that a doctor is not necessary to monitor executions given the high level of anesthetic to be given an inmate. The ruling was appealed, but the court refused to continue that moratorium.
The state has requested that the Missouri Supreme Court set execution dates for 10 men on death row, but no dates have been set.
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider lethal injection challenges from two Kentucky capital punishment inmates. Missouri death row inmate Taylor plans to seek an "en banc" ("whole court") hearing before the Eighth Circuit Court and, failing that, will seek a writ of certiorari (calling up the lower court's record on the case for review) in the U. S. Supreme Court.
The rally and lobby day is a part of Moratorium Now!, a campaign coordinated by 18 civic and religious groups from across Missouri, including the Missouri Catholic Conference and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet.
The event featured Joe Amrine, who spent 17 years on death row in Missouri before his exoneration in 2003. Amrine was wrongly convicted in the stabbing death of Gary Barber, a fellow prisoner at the Missouri State Penitentiary. He is one of 126 men and women nationwide who have been exonerated.
"All I asked for when I was released from prison was an apology. I still haven't gotten one," Amrine said. "The state prison system is unrepentant.
"I don't understand our society. We get all upset about Michael Vick and his dog fights. Hello, people, we're executing people over here," he said.
"The death penalty affects the family of the inmate as much as the family of the victim," Amrine said. "It makes no sense to kill someone for killing someone. Statistics show that murder rates are higher in states with the death penalty."
Other speakers included Faheemah Thabit of St. Louis, whose father; brother and stepfather were murder victims in separate crimes. She supports a death penalty study and moratorium. Jennifer Herndon, also of St. Louis, is a capital-defense attorney who has represented Missouri death row inmates.
Deekin told the group that he had been working very hard to get HB1870 to committee, and to get a hearing on it this year.
"If we get it on the floor, we can let the people decide," he said.
Rep. Deekin said he was in favor of the death penalty but was also in favor of a moratorium on it. "If I was on a jury and we condemned a person to death then 5 years later found out evidence that he was innocent, I couldn't live with myself," the lawmaker said. "The way the execution system in Missouri is used, it's troublesome to people with a social conscience."
HB 1870 places a moratorium on all executions until Jan.1, 2012, and establishes a commission on the death penalty to study its use. The commission would be comprised of 10 members: two members of the state Senate, two members of the state's House of Representatives, the state public defender or designee, the state's Attorney General or designee, a criminal defense attorney, a county prosecutor, and a family member of a murder victim and a family member of a person on death row. The commission would make recommendations for changes to laws and court rules to make sure that:
l Defendants who are sentenced to death are in fact guilty of first-degree murder;
l Defendants are provided adequate and experienced counsel and resources for the defense of their cases at trial and at the appellate and post-conviction stages;
l Race does not play an impermissible role in determining which defendants are sentenced to death;
l Appellate and post-conviction procedures are adequate to correct errors and injustices occurring at the trial level including access to evidence for forensic testing, and
l Prosecutors throughout the state use the same guidelines and criteria when seeking the death penalty.
Participants spent the afternoon lobbying state representatives and senators. Notre Dame Sister Rose Rita Huelsmann works with the Criminal Justice Ministry of the Society of St. Vincent De Paul in St. Louis and teaches classes at Potosi Correctional Center, where 45 capital punishment inmates reside. She waited outside the office of Sen. Heard-Days, the sponsor of SB 800, the three-year moratorium bill. "This is my second year coming to lobby days for a moratorium on the death penalty," she said.
Amrine had acknowledged that death penalty studies have been done before. "What do we do with the studies," he asked the group. "We talk about them, that's all. We do nothing about changing things. We started studying the death penalty 25 years ago and we're still just talking about it," he said.
A group of seniors from Christian Brothers College High School in St. Louis hoped the future would bring more than just talk.
Paul D'Agrosa, 18, said he thought a moratorium was a great idea. "With a moratorium on the death penalty, it would give lawyers more time to review cases. I think they'd find more people who were wrongfully accused," he said.
The young men were all members of the Human Rights Club at CBC.
Brian Corrigan, 18, said he was definitely in support of a moratorium on capital punishment. "Execution is in-human," he said.
Andy Winkler, 17, said he thought the death penalty process was in place because families of victims were suffering, "but, you know, executing the murderer doesn't bring the victim back."
Kevin Petersen, 18, said he thought the death penalty was an outrage, "a good example of how laws could get corrupted throughout history. How often is the wrong person executed and how often are executions botched, and we don't know about it?"
The four young men and dozens of other Missourians spoke with or tried to speak with legislators to affirm that a moratorium on the death penalty was a good idea.
Adrienne Hynek, director of the Kansas City-St. Joseph diocesan Respect Life Office, said she thought lobby days were powerful tools because legislators could see the faces of the people.
"It makes lawmaking more personal when you can see and talk to the people who the laws are for," she said.
Hynek spoke with several legislators, some who were in favor of the moratorium, some who were not in favor of it, and a few who waved the citizen lobbyists off.
"A moratorium on the death penalty is a great idea," she said. "The death penalty is such a subjective judgment, and different juries look at the crime of murder differently. It's very frightening that the decision to put someone to death is so subjective, based a lot on emotions and prejudices."
Even Cain was not put to death for the murder of his brother, Abel, Hynek said. "God put a special mark on Cain so he would not be killed. Doesn't that say something about the way we as Christians should behave towards our fellow men?"
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