Request Your Senator Oppose Two Bills Already Passed by the House:

We 'd rather be encouraging citizens to support progressive legislation, but with the reality of 2007 legislature, we're compelled to ask you to help block passage of two regressive death-penalty measures. If your senator is on the Judiciary Committee (Sen. Chuck Graham, D-Columbia is) please contact him or her as soon as you can; urge your Senator to vote “Do Not Pass” either bill-- see list below of committee members and contact info.

**Both bills are in the Senate Judiciary (Criminal and Civil Jurisprudence) Committee, which convenes Monday, 23 April for their weekly hearing @ 6 pm in the Senate Lounge, on the 3^rd floor of the Captiol in Jefferson City. You are welcome to attend the hearing if you would like.

HCS for HB 820 would grant anonymity to execution team members, close the execution protocol to public and judicial oversight, and create a misdemeanor offense should someone divulge the identity of a “team” member, potentially punishing investigative reporters doing important work in our democractic society. Urge Sen. Graham or your senator, if on the Judiciary Committee to vote “Do Not Pass” (House Committee Substitute for House Bill) HCS for HB 820 during the committee's “executive session, immediately after the 23 April public hearing. Should a majority of members vote favorably, HCS for HB 820 would be moved forward for debate on the Senate floor and possible passage.

HB 945 would dictate capital punishment for the murder of a “criminal justice official” unless jurors can be convinced “mitigating” factors outweigh the crime’s severity. Missouri law already recognizes the murder of a criminal-justice official as a reason for someone to be sentenced to death(four men have been executed in Missouri, convicted of murdering such officials since 1989). HB 945 would undermines the jury system, insulting the ability of Missouri citizens to make decisions as jurors, would extend appeals compounding the anguish of murder-victim families and increasing costs for Missouri taxpayers . Gov. Blunt made this a legislative priority in his State of the State address-- thus it seems to be legislation more inspired at making political points by appearing “tough on crime” than honoring slain criminal justice officials. Judiciary Committee, which will hold a public hearing for the measure @ 6 pm Monday, 23 April for House Bill 945. If your senator's on the committee ask him or her to vote “Do Not Pass” this GOP bill in the “executive session” (as soon as 30 April).

Urge your senator, whether on the committee or not to vote against both HCS for HB 820 and HB 945 should either or both reaches the Senate floor. To find out who is your state senator, log onto http://www.senate.mo.gov and go to “Legislator Look up.”

For more details on the bills scroll further down.

A list of committee members (contact only your senator if on Judiciary):

Sen. Chuck Graham (Boone and Randolph Counties) 442-0427; 573-751-2162 or chuck.graham@senate.mo.gov;

Sen. Matt Bartle (R-Lee’s Summit and committee chair), 573-751-1464, matt_bartle@senate.mo.gov;

Sen. Jack Goodman (R-Mt. Vernon, vice-chair), 573-751-2234, jack.goodman@senate.mo,

Sen. Chuck Graham (contact info above);

Sen. Jolie Justus (D-KC), 573-751-2788, jolie.justus@senate.mo.gov ;

Sen. Chris Koster (R-Harrisonville), 573-751-1430, chriskoster@senate.mo.gov;

Sen. John Loudon (R-Chesterfield), 573-751-9763, john_loudon@senate.mo.gov;

Sen. Rob Mayer (R-Dexter), 573-751-3859, rob.mayer@senate.mo.gov ;

Sen. Jeff Smith (D-St. Louis), 573-751-3599, jeff.smith@senate.mo.gov

Urge your Senator to Oppose HCS for HB 820

--Granting anonymity to execution team members and closing the protocol to public record

Here are some reasons senators should vote against HCS for HB 820.......

HB 820 would mask a theoretically public policy in a veil of secrecy-- a development contrary to democratic principles and accountability.

The bill would require the identities of the Department of Corrections execution team be kept confidential and not subject to discovery, subpoena, or other means of legal compulsion. Furthermore, any execution protocol of the Department of Corrections is to remain a closed record, except for the provision that directly relates to the administration of lethal gas or chemicals. As written this bill could prevent even judicial or governmental review of the execution process.

Without such oversight Missourians won’t have access to information regarding whether the execution team members are properly trained and can carry out the state killings in a competent manner. Missouri executed 66 people since 1989. In at least two of the executions, the lethal injection of Emmitt Foster in 1995 and of Bert Hunter in 2000, there were problems connected to the competency of the State team. In Foster’s case, the execution was halted when the chemicals stopped circulating (as it was later determined) due to the tightness of leather straps that bound Foster to a gurney. With Foster gasping and convulsing, the window blinds were drawn so the legal witnesses could not view the disturbing scene. Death was pronounced thirty minutes after the execution began, and three minutes later the blinds were reopened so witnesses could view the corpse. Bert Hunter had an apparent reaction to the lethal drugs, which from similar cases in other states, has been attributed to either an incorrect drug dosage or to administering the drugs too quickly. Hunter repeatedly coughed, had convulsions and gasped for air before he lapsed into unconsciousness. HB 820 could potentially be used to cover-up future mishaps, accidents, and other extraordinary means used to prepare and carry out an execution.

Capital punishment is an institution at least theoretically of public policy. Adding this layer of administrative secrecy however, seems to at least imply, appropriately we would say, that there is a stigma of shame in being a member of the state-killing “team.”

HB 820 could have a chilling effect, criminalizing investigative journalism.

A federal judge ordered a stay in the execution of Michael Taylor after testimony from the Missouri doctor who had assisted in state executions since 1995. In a deposition to the court the doctor testified the execution protocol was not written down, that he sometimes confused the names of drugs and that he had “independent authority” to change what he did. He also admitted he was dyslexic and hence, sometimes transposed numbers (as when measuring chemicals for the lethal injections). That reporting helped disclose a troubling professional record of the doctor, who according to the Post-Dispatch (7/30/06) “was sued for malpractice more than 20 times, by his own estimate, and was publicly reprimanded in 2003 by the state Board of Healing Arts for failing to disclose malpractice suits to a hospital where he was treating patients.” Two Missouri hospitals won't allow him to practice within their walls due to such ethical breeches, the newspaper reported.

Such information is worthwhile for the general public to know as state officials have purported (somewhat inaccurately we have learned) that team members executed all the men in a humane, professional manner. The Post-Dispatch report informing the public of problems with the execution protocol in Missouri, while discomforting for state officials, served the greater interests of our democratic society. To charge individuals, including reporters, with a misdemeanor offense for identifying an execution team member-- particularly one with a dubious work record-- shuts the door on press freedom and would deny the public's need to know important details of what is being done and by whom, in our collective name.

Reporters have not and would not be so inclined to report the names of any unwilling officials participating in executions unless they exercised incompetence or additional unethical behavior during the life-ending procedure. The identity of no other execution team-member has been made publicly through the media, to the best of our knowledge. As HCS for HB 820 is written, a DOC worker who's perhaps troubled by inappropriate actions taken by a fellow execution-team member, and acting as a whistle blower by notifying media outlets, could also be singled out for prosecution. Such public reports could only be made with the permission of the DOC director, the bill states. Public transparency, we believe, ultimately helps to guarantee a heightened level of competency and professional conduct.

The issue of safety for DOC workers is being used inappropriately as a rationale to make more secretive the public policy of state killings.

Supporters and opponents of the death penalty alike genuinely care about the safety of DOC workers. Theirs is a very difficult and all too-often thankless job. Corrections officers oversee many people who have committed truly heinous crimes. It is no doubt particularly burdensome, emotionally for those working as a member of DOC’s execution teams. The issue of DOC worker safety seems to be something of a cloak to make the process more clandestine, as officials seem frustrated lethal injections have been halted by federal courts and as it's become more difficult to locate physicians willing to assist since the doctor's name was reported.

There have have been no specific reports of any DOC officials being attacked or threatened as a result of an impending execution or following a state killing. Bill sponsors and other officials have raised the hypothetical specter of gang members attacking officials team members to exact revenge for the execution of a peer. Perhaps at greater risk though, are prosecutors, judges and jurors who take part in the conviction and death sentencing of individuals in Missouri county courts. Would HCS HB 820 supporters also suggest we next make the identities of these officials secret to the public, having trials routinely happen behind opaque screens?

We with Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, as our name states, oppose all executions-- whether conducted publicly or secretly-- as immoral actions taken by the state. Beyond that though, we do find other significant problems with HCS HB820 as already outlined.

(Some material for this sheet came from an MCC document).

Urge Your Senator to Oppose House Bill 945

--A bill dictating capital punishment for the murder of a “criminal justice official” unless jurors can be convinced other wise.

HB 945 is scheduled for a public hearing, at 6pm, Monday, 23 April before the Senate Judiciary Committee and could voted on in the executive session of the committee’s weekly 30 April meeting. Here are some reasons senators should vote against the measure….

HB 945 is political window dressing.

Missouri law already recognizes the murder of a criminal-justice official as constituting grounds for someone to be sentenced to death. Jurors currently need to find just one of 17 “aggravating factors” listed in Missouri statutes as being the case in a murder to justify a death sentence. Three of these statutory aggravating factors are already dedicated to the murder of officers, prosecuting attorneys, judges, jailers and corrections personnel.

Since 1989, four men have been executed in Missouri for murdering justice officials (two were convicted of murdering highway patrolmen, one of killing a prison guard and one man of murdering a county sheriff and two deputies). Another person was executed for killing an off-duty police officer. Others convicted of killing justice officials are currently incarcerated at the Potosi prison, waiting for an execution date. Missouri citizens have already proven themselves willing to follow through with prosecutors’ recommendations to sentence to death individuals who have committed such reprehensible crimes.

HB 945 undermines the jury system, insulting the ability of Missouri citizens to make decisions as jurors.

The bill states an individual convicted of murdering a justice official “shall be punished by death.” Missouri's death penalty statutes require jurors to weigh aggravating and mitigating factors, leaving the final decision whether to impose the death penalty with the jury. HB 945 essentially says qualified Missouri citizens do not have the ability nor intelligence to make the judgment as jurors themselves—although it is a decision state officials wisely have entrusted to them since 1983.

In death penalty cases, the jury is already "death-qualified.” Prospective jurors are questioned about their opinions on the death penalty, with the trial judge excusing people whose opposition to the concept would prevent them from returning a sentence of “death”. Through a limited number of peremptory strikes, prosecutors exclude citizens for various reasons, particularly for not being vigorous in their support of capital punishment (defense attorneys strike an equal number including those they see as enthusiastic supporters). In the end though, only death-penalty proponents serve as jurors in capital trials.

Historically, Missouri's death penalty statute has distinguished it from other capital jurisdictions in making clear the jury is never required to return a verdict of death. This bill would hamstring jurors and erode the concept of a defendant being tried by a jury of his peers, a fundamental element of our democracy. The question before the House with HB 945 is not whether one supports the death penalty, but whether one trusts the people of Missouri and this democratic human element of our state’s death-penalty justice system.

HB 945 would extend appeals compounding the anguish of murder-victim families and increasing costs for Missouri taxpayers .

Under current law, prosecutors are reasonably required to convince jurors during the sentencing phase of a capital trial that aggravating factors outweigh mitigators. This bill would seismically shift onto the defendant (and his or her attorney), the burden of proving that the punishment for an individual convicted of murdering an official should be something besides “death.” It would reverse the long-standing principle that the prosecution is obliged to prove all the necessary elements to justify any criminal sentence. Defense counsel would be compelled to challenge the constitutionality of the provision, ultimately to the US Supreme Court. Rather than aiding prosecutors, this bill would add immense legal costs--almost all at taxpayer expense--delaying the final resolution of these cases for months or years more, further extending the time which murder-victim families have to cope publicly with their horrific loss.

Rather than genuinely and appropriately honoring officials tragically slain while performing their duty, HB 945 seems at least as much inspired to serve some elected officials, intent on tallying political points by appearing “tough on crime.”

HB 945 would help codify a hierarchy of valued human life.

We deeply appreciate the civic work performed by criminal justice officials, recognizing many risk their lives just by doing their jobs. Furthermore, we view each human life as equally precious. We believe no one (and no state for that matter) has the right to take any human life. HB 945 however, would essentially establish the lives of criminal justice officials as constituting worth beyond all other citizens. Someone convicted of killing such a man or woman would automatically be sentenced to death, unless defense attorneys could convince jurors mitigating factors merited the only other alternative sentence, life without the possibility of parole. HB 945 is more of a throwback it seems, to colonial or feudal societies where the lives of the knighted or noble class were deemed of greater value than those of commoners.

HB 945 by expanding the death penalty contradicts the global trend.

Missouri has executed 66 men, 4^th most of U.S. states, surpassed in number only by Texas, Virginia, and Oklahoma (Missouri meanwhile ranks 17th in population). As Missouri lawmakers stand poised to potentially expand the death penalty in our state, the bulk of the world’s nations are moving away from the institution with a majority now abolitionists. All of Europe, including Russia, and almost all the nations of the Western Hemisphere, have abolished the death penalty.

We realize in Missouri: people have been wrongfully convicted, exonerated and some executed; that the current lengthy legal process (worthwhile to minimize case inequities like wrongful convictions) do further traumatize murder victims families; and that legal expenses are more exorbitant in capital than non-capital murder cases (as learned by reports from other states. Missouri officials have not been forthcoming in offering cost comparisons). Missouri lawmakers, rather than expanding the death penalty as proposed with HB 945, should block its passage, instead enacting HB 445 or SB 439, instituting a death-penalty study and execution moratorium.

Prepared by Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty

For more information contact Jeff Stack with MADP at 573-449-4585 or Rita Linhardt at 573-635-7239 with the Missouri Catholic Conference (MCC).

Thanks in advance for your efforts. In solidarity,

Jeff Stack

Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, Legislative Coordinator

Come hear abolitionist Joan Cheever speak

Author of  Back from the Dead: One Woman’s Search for the Men Who Walked off America’s Death Row

7:00 pm Thursday, 7 December

Room 210 GCB (the General Classroom Building)

(across from Brady Commons, on Rollins Rd east of intersection with Maryland Ave.)

University of Missouri- Columbia campus

*Free and open to the public*

 

Supporters of the death penalty are prone to say, “states need to kill those people who kill because they WILL kill again.” Such an assumption gets dashed in a recently published book, Back from the Dead: One Woman’s Search for the Men Who Walked off America’s Death Row. We invite you to hear a talk by Joan Cheever, author of this most illuminating book on December 7 in on the UMC campus.

 

Cheever’s book focuses on the 589 former death row inmates who, through a lottery of fate, were given a second chance at life in 1972 when the death penalty was abolished, being ruled unconstitutional by the Furman U.S. Supreme Court decision—only to be resurrected in the United States four years later with the Gregg decision. Joan Cheever represented Walter Williams on Texas’ Death Row as his attorney for several years, and ultimately, helplessley witnessed his execution. Cheever always wondered what would have happened if his death sentence had been reversed and he was eventually released from prison? Would he have killed again?  (log onto http://www.backfromthedeadusa.com/  for more information, reviews, etc.)

 

Two years after Williams’ 1994 execution, Cheever was determined to approach the question more broadly and journalistically (she has additionally had a distinguished career as a legal-affairs journalist, including working as an editor with the National Law Journal). She traveled across the U.S. and into the lives and homes of former Death Row inmates to reveal these tales of second chances-- of tragedy, failure, racism, injustice, redemption and rehabilitation.  A review in the San Antonio News-Express notes:
 
“…Of the “lottery” winners, 322 had been released from prison by the time Cheever finished her book. Of those, about one-third — 111 in all — ended up either back in prison or eligible to be returned to prison. Of the 111, 33 men committed trivial violations of their probation (for example, accumulating unpaid parking tickets, or being at an establishment where alcohol was sold). Of the remaining 78, more than half (42) committed nonviolent crimes, like robbery. The remaining 36 went back to prison for violent offenses, in which 29 committed armed robbery or aggravated assault. Of the remaining seven, two were convicted of attempted murder, two for manslaughter and three for murder. Most people, I suspect, tend to think murderers will surely murder again. Cheever’s story demonstrates the contrary....There is, in this report, an implicit rebuke of our contemporary approach to punishment, which has largely abandoned the idea of rehabilitation, and replaced it with the idea that we should give up on tens of thousands of inmates and just make sure that we keep them incarcerated in an institution from which they cannot escape.”
 
If you will be unable to attend her talk on the UMC campus (or if you want to simply hear more from her), Joan Cheever will also be a guest on three talk/news radio programs while she is mid-Missouri:

 

Thursday, 7 December

5:30 pm.-6:00 pm  KSSZ 93.9 FM Talk show with host Derek Gilbert

 

Friday, 8 December

8:25 am-8:40 am  KFRU 1400 AM Talk show with host David Lyle

5:00 pm- 5:20 pm KOPN 89.5 FM Interview during the News Hour with host Frank Shulse

 

Cheever will additionally be speaking at 7:00 p.m. on 6 December in Room 1075 of McDonnell Douglas Hall on the St. Louis University campus. Her Missouri visit is co-sponsored by the Mid-MO Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), St. Louis University’s Criminal Justice Program/School for Professional Studies, UMC Students for Progressive Action, UMC Peace Studies Program and the Justice for Reggie Campaign (other groups may be joining as co-sponsors in the coming week as well). 

 

We hope you will take time and be able to hear the informative and important words of Joan Cheever while she visits Missouri. Call 573-449-4585 or 314-977-2330 for more information.

 

Join the Mid-Missouri "Troops Home Fast"

Urging an Immediate End to the U.S. War & Occupation of Iraq

The Mid-Missouri FOR and the Columbia Peace Coalition invite you to join dozens of us across mid-Missouri who are fasting for a single day, once a week or longer as part of an international fast (begun by the peace group Code Pink on the 4^th of July and continuing in front of the White House). The fast for peace, an end to the Iraq war and occupation, will continue until Sept. 21, International Peace Day.

As the wars, the US military occupations slog on, and thousands more are killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., the CPC recognizes the need to ratchet up area anti-war efforts. Consequently, the Coalition commenced the mid-Missouri “Troops Home Fast,” a public chain-fast started Monday, 7 August Participants will exercise self-sacrifice to more intently urge an end to the U.S. occupation of and war upon Iraq.

This acti