Post by gellibee on Jun 2, 2007 11:36:42 GMT -5
Execution 1st in Ariz. in years - 112 inmates linger on state's death row as cases wade through court system
Arizona judges and juries have never been shy about imposing the death sentence.
There are 112 men and women on Arizona's death row, some of whom have lingered there for more than 20 years as their cases struggle through state and federal courts.
Although Arizona was among one of the most active states to carry out executions in the late 1990s, no one has been put to death here since November 2000.
When Robert Comer is laid on a gurney in Florence today, he will be the first person executed in nearly seven years - and only because he went to court to earn the right to die.
Why have there been so few executions this decade and what takes so long?
A pair of U.S. Supreme Court cases shut down executions in Arizona for at least four years. And backlogs in the state and federal courts have slowed case movement to a trickle.
Comer, 50, has waited nearly 20 years to die. In 1987, he killed a man at a campground near Apache Lake, then raped a woman in front of her boyfriend. He was sentenced to death in 1988. When he petitioned the courts to let him waive his appeals in 2000, it set off hearings to determine whether he was sane.
"It's human nature to want to live," said Robert Storrs, veteran capital defense lawyer. "People can make a rational choice to die. But anytime someone does, you have to make sure it's not because of mental illness."
In the late 1990s, Arizona was in the forefront of states that executed murderers. Four prisoners were put to death in 1998, seven in 1999 and three in 2000.
But during that time, the U.S. Supreme Court was reinventing the way that sentences were imposed with a pair of rulings saying that juries and not judges should determine if a defendant deserved a harsher, or "aggravated, " sentence. Prosecutors and defense attorneys across the country waited for the right case to test how that theory would be applied to capital cases.
It came from Arizona.
In January 2002, the high court agreed to hear the case of Timothy Ring, who had been sentenced to death for killing an armored-car driver in Phoenix in 1994. That June, the justices issued their ruling in the case, which said that juries, not judges, should decide whether there were aggravating factors to warrant the death penalty.
Arizona went one step further in rewriting its death penalty statute so that juries not only determined aggravating factors but also the sentence.
The Ring decision affected five states that did not have jury determination in death penalty trials: Arizona, Nebraska, Colorado, Montana and Idaho.
Those states, unlike Arizona, have very few people on their death rows. But executions did not start up immediately, because no one knew whether the ruling was retroactive. Then, in 2004, the Supreme Court ruled in another Arizona case that courts only needed to re-examine those cases that had not yet gone through the first stage of appeals.
In Arizona, that meant 30 convicted killers were removed from death row as their cases were reviewed by the state Supreme Court. Most cases were returned to the lower courts to have juries decide on the death penalty. Many, including Ring's case, are still awaiting new trials.
Lengthy delays
Many Arizona defendants have been on death row for more than 20 years.
One cause of the logjam is there are not enough qualified attorneys to take cases to the second stage of appeal. Nine Arizona cases are on hold at that stage as they await attorneys.
"We just could not find enough attorneys to take these cases in a timely fashion," said Arizona Supreme Court Justice Michael Ryan, who heads a state task force on the death penalty.
"There really isn't a good explanation, in my opinion, for a lengthy delay for a case just to be considered on appeal," said Kent Cattani, who heads the capital litigation section of the Arizona Attorney General's Office and who has lobbied the federal courts to speed up.
Ryan points to the heavy caseload of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and to the efficiency of the local federal Public Defender's Office representing the cases in federal court: 54 in the district court and 21 in the 9th Circuit.
Dale Baich, who heads the staff in that office, said, "The cases are moving. Most of those cases have been sent back either for an evidentiary hearing or a new sentencing."
But there are other factors that affect cases. Since the Ring decision, for example, there have been U.S. Supreme Court decisions stopping executions of juveniles and the mentally retarded. Such rulings open new doors to appeal old cases.
"At some point, a balance between defendants' rights and public safety and justice has to come back to a more reasonable level. And right now the death penalty is effectively being nullified through trial delays and endless appeals," said Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas.
Scrutiny necessary
Some say that time is a necessary price to pay for justice. The ultimate penalty demands that the ultimate scrutiny be paid. Since 1989, 200 men nationwide, including two in Arizona, have been exonerated based on DNA evidence, a development that spurred reform efforts as officials began to realize that there could be other frailties in the criminal justice system. Of those men, 14 had served time on death row.
Eleanor Eisenberg, president of the Death Penalty Forum, an anti-death penalty lobby, recalled the case of Ray Krone, who spent 10 years in prison and nearly three years on Arizona's death row before DNA evidence proved that he didn't commit the murder for which he was accused.
"We don't think we should ever get to execution," Eisenberg said "But if we are going to continue to execute people in this country, then we have to make absolutely sure not that the person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt as proved at trial, but that it is truly the correct person who committed the crime."
Arizona judges and juries have never been shy about imposing the death sentence.
There are 112 men and women on Arizona's death row, some of whom have lingered there for more than 20 years as their cases struggle through state and federal courts.
Although Arizona was among one of the most active states to carry out executions in the late 1990s, no one has been put to death here since November 2000.
When Robert Comer is laid on a gurney in Florence today, he will be the first person executed in nearly seven years - and only because he went to court to earn the right to die.
Why have there been so few executions this decade and what takes so long?
A pair of U.S. Supreme Court cases shut down executions in Arizona for at least four years. And backlogs in the state and federal courts have slowed case movement to a trickle.
Comer, 50, has waited nearly 20 years to die. In 1987, he killed a man at a campground near Apache Lake, then raped a woman in front of her boyfriend. He was sentenced to death in 1988. When he petitioned the courts to let him waive his appeals in 2000, it set off hearings to determine whether he was sane.
"It's human nature to want to live," said Robert Storrs, veteran capital defense lawyer. "People can make a rational choice to die. But anytime someone does, you have to make sure it's not because of mental illness."
In the late 1990s, Arizona was in the forefront of states that executed murderers. Four prisoners were put to death in 1998, seven in 1999 and three in 2000.
But during that time, the U.S. Supreme Court was reinventing the way that sentences were imposed with a pair of rulings saying that juries and not judges should determine if a defendant deserved a harsher, or "aggravated, " sentence. Prosecutors and defense attorneys across the country waited for the right case to test how that theory would be applied to capital cases.
It came from Arizona.
In January 2002, the high court agreed to hear the case of Timothy Ring, who had been sentenced to death for killing an armored-car driver in Phoenix in 1994. That June, the justices issued their ruling in the case, which said that juries, not judges, should decide whether there were aggravating factors to warrant the death penalty.
Arizona went one step further in rewriting its death penalty statute so that juries not only determined aggravating factors but also the sentence.
The Ring decision affected five states that did not have jury determination in death penalty trials: Arizona, Nebraska, Colorado, Montana and Idaho.
Those states, unlike Arizona, have very few people on their death rows. But executions did not start up immediately, because no one knew whether the ruling was retroactive. Then, in 2004, the Supreme Court ruled in another Arizona case that courts only needed to re-examine those cases that had not yet gone through the first stage of appeals.
In Arizona, that meant 30 convicted killers were removed from death row as their cases were reviewed by the state Supreme Court. Most cases were returned to the lower courts to have juries decide on the death penalty. Many, including Ring's case, are still awaiting new trials.
Lengthy delays
Many Arizona defendants have been on death row for more than 20 years.
One cause of the logjam is there are not enough qualified attorneys to take cases to the second stage of appeal. Nine Arizona cases are on hold at that stage as they await attorneys.
"We just could not find enough attorneys to take these cases in a timely fashion," said Arizona Supreme Court Justice Michael Ryan, who heads a state task force on the death penalty.
"There really isn't a good explanation, in my opinion, for a lengthy delay for a case just to be considered on appeal," said Kent Cattani, who heads the capital litigation section of the Arizona Attorney General's Office and who has lobbied the federal courts to speed up.
Ryan points to the heavy caseload of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and to the efficiency of the local federal Public Defender's Office representing the cases in federal court: 54 in the district court and 21 in the 9th Circuit.
Dale Baich, who heads the staff in that office, said, "The cases are moving. Most of those cases have been sent back either for an evidentiary hearing or a new sentencing."
But there are other factors that affect cases. Since the Ring decision, for example, there have been U.S. Supreme Court decisions stopping executions of juveniles and the mentally retarded. Such rulings open new doors to appeal old cases.
"At some point, a balance between defendants' rights and public safety and justice has to come back to a more reasonable level. And right now the death penalty is effectively being nullified through trial delays and endless appeals," said Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas.
Scrutiny necessary
Some say that time is a necessary price to pay for justice. The ultimate penalty demands that the ultimate scrutiny be paid. Since 1989, 200 men nationwide, including two in Arizona, have been exonerated based on DNA evidence, a development that spurred reform efforts as officials began to realize that there could be other frailties in the criminal justice system. Of those men, 14 had served time on death row.
Eleanor Eisenberg, president of the Death Penalty Forum, an anti-death penalty lobby, recalled the case of Ray Krone, who spent 10 years in prison and nearly three years on Arizona's death row before DNA evidence proved that he didn't commit the murder for which he was accused.
"We don't think we should ever get to execution," Eisenberg said "But if we are going to continue to execute people in this country, then we have to make absolutely sure not that the person is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt as proved at trial, but that it is truly the correct person who committed the crime."