Virginia Killed That Woman

The Commonwealth of Virginia killed Teresa Lewis.  I told you at the beginning of the month that the Commonwealth intended to kill her, and Thursday night she was executed.  Her crimes were heinous, but her execution by Virginia is outrageous.  Please read the original post at the link.

2d Circuit Nominee In Trouble for Not Loving the Death Penalty, Enough

President Obama nominated Hartford, Conneticut-based, US District Judge Robert N. Chatigny to the 2d Circuit Court of Appeals.  The American Bar Association which as you know, is the organization of major domos in the legal profession, unanimously rated Judge Chatigny "well qualified" for the appellate position, but as you know there are some politicians and others in this country who are in love with the Angel of Death and he has raised their ire.  Here's a link to the RedState.com article on the right's objrections to the Chatigny nomination.  You get the full flavor from that link of the right wing outrage at Chatigny.

US District Judges are, as I've said in the past, the cream of the judicial crop.  These are the most deliberative and intellectual men and women in the legal profession.  By reputation, Judge Robert Chatigny is one of the most thoughtful and respected of the current U.S. District Court bench. 

Federal Judges take very seriously, the job of looking at the fine grain of American jurisprudence, especially the death penalty.  Judge Chatigny is under attack by Arizona Senator John Kyl and Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn who essentially critiqued Judge Chatigny's because he is insufficiently in love with state-sanctioned killing of death row inmates.  Kyl and Coburn love the angel of death, it is the politics of the Southwest to love the death penalty.

Ohio Kills the Inmate Who Tried To Kill Himself

According to Cleveland.com, Ohio just killed the inmate who tired to kill himself.  This is so twisted, the inmate tried to kill himself about 9 days ago with an overdow of medication he had secreted in his cell.  Ohio revives him, renders health care, then kills him.  What sort of sick karma does this earn for Ohioans?

Angels of Torture and Death

One of the stories that has astonished me, is the story of the lawyers at the Justice Department and the White House who ordered up and rationalized the torture of prisoners of war in violation of the Geneva Conventions.  The New York Times and others are reporting on the report that clears (now Judge) Jay Bybee (pic top) and (now UCLA law professor) John Yoo (pic bottom) of "ethics" violations for authoring a memorandum laying a legal foundation for the "water boarding" and other "stress" strategies used agasinst our prisoners of war.

These two are clebrities in conservative circles, in fact Professor Yoo got the 20 questions treatment by Deborah Solomon in the Sunday New York Times Magazine feature back in December, he's a rockstar!

I'm a Bad Lawyer, but I'm at a loss how any lawyer can rationalize in a legal memorandum a jurisprudential basis for harming another human being, even an "enemy" combatant.  There is no jurisprudence of torture, there is no jurisprudence for enhancing "stress" on human beings.  The logic, that these steps were necessary to "keep America safe in the days after 9/11" is a not a legal argument.  Lawyers consistent with their professional oaths and oaths of office saw fit to offer "legal opinions" that said in effect--flout the Geneva Conventions, violated their professional ethics and the oaths and promises they undertook when they became lawyers.  That a supervisor at the Justice Department in a supervisory role, said otherwise, letting them off the hook for ethics violations, doesn't change that fact.

Oh, let me deal with the "24 hour/ticking time bomb" scenario--which is the only rationale for torture.  Fine, torture away, but don't claim it was "legally"-based.  If you were right then "bravo" the country will hail you as a hero and your pardon and medal will be forthcoming.  You might even have a "necessity" defense available to you if I remember my criminal law correctly, but do not pretend that a foundation in law or logic necessitates a systematic legal rationale for clearly criminal acts.

You don't have to read deeply at the Bad Lawyer Blawg to realize that my soul is deeply troubled and has been for sometime by many things (mostly by my own failings) and by the Angels of torture and death.  I see them everwhere.  We, collectively and daily,see the consequences of the dark spirits in our violent society.  From the Alabama professor who takes a gun and kills her colleagues; or the Information Technology professional who enraged at the IRS flies his small plane into an Austin, Texas office building recreating his own personal 9/11; and,  to all the horrific local accounts of murder and violence especially among families.  In so many ways we have supplanted the values of love and respect for one another with attitudes and righteous anger.  We are bleeding away our humanity.  Who are the angels of torture and death?  We are.

When we rationalize hatred and killing, when we see the world as us versus them, when we resort to the gun and the bomb--the angels of torture and death are in the mirror.   Let's visualize the death of these angels.  That, I believe, will bring us to a more civilized place.

Serial Killer to Self-Represent In Third Murder Trial

Long time death row inmate, and suspected serial killer Rodney Alcala, age 66, goes on trial tomorrow for the third time in the murder of Robin Samsoe (pic) according to the Orange County Register, Alcala is expected to act as his own attorney.  The Orange County Register reports that the two previous convictions of Alcala were reversed.  In the iterim years DNA testing has linked Alcala to 4 other rapes and murders of young women.  Additionally, Alcala has a lengthy prior record of rape and assault.  He has been on death row for 30 years.

Alcala a former UCLA photography student is purported to have a genuis-level IQ, and he intends to represent himself at trial--which is why this matter is notable.   Twice previously, Alcala received the death sentence for the kidnap, rape and murder of 12 year old Robin Samsoe, and the death penalty is at stake in this re-trial. 

What can we expect of "attorney" Samsoe?  Games.  Once previously, Alcala fashioned a plastic bow-tie for his prison garb, when told he would not be able to have cvilian clothes. 

Here's betting that the California courts enabled a sociopath to have fun and games, to torment the survivors of little Robin Samsoe--because the state is intent (at taxpayer's expense) upon the symbolism of death.   As we have seen, on Bad Lawyer, California so mal-administers the death penalty that in reality almost no death row inmate is ever executed! 

Already, constitutional problems have arisen in the Alcala case, although a jury is selected and the case is set to go Monday--in a colloquy with the court Alcala told the Judge that the time frame restricitions on his phone calls from prison prevented the completion of the work of expert witnesses employed by him in his defense (doubtlessly also at taxpayer expense.)

One more unitended consequence of the demagoguery of the death penalty. 

California Gets Ready To Kill Kevin Cooper and He May Be Innocent!

California is planning to kill Kevin Cooper, (pic) and once again we are confronted with the dilemma that he may be "actually innocent."

The LA Times has this story about Mr. Cooper and his long, crazy road to gurney. 

The murders Kevin Cooper stands convicted for are horrible:  4 members of the Chino Hills, California Ryan family all stabbed or hacked to death allegedly by this one man; but there is a some compelling reasons to believe that he may not have been the perpetrator or perpetrators.  Astonishingly, 11 federal judges and five of he original jurors are trying to stop the execution, here's what the LAT has to say:

"[Twenty-six] years [after Kevin Cooper's conviction], the legal hurdles to [his] execution have been surmounted. With the Supreme Court's decision last month not to review his claim of innocence, the 52-year-old becomes only the sixth of California's 697 death row prisoners cleared for lethal injection once a federal judge approves revised procedures.


But the exhaustion of Cooper's legal recourse hasn't silenced supporters who claim he was the victim of corrupt law enforcement and stunning bad luck.

The opponents of capital punishment who have long clung to puzzling clues and hints of police misconduct have been joined by a prison warden, 11 federal judges and five jurors now bothered by allegations that Cooper was framed.

'The State of California may be about to execute an innocent man,' Judge William A. Fletcher of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in an impassioned dissent from the last review upholding Cooper's conviction. Deputies, he said, 'manipulated and planted evidence in order to convict Cooper' and 'discounted, disregarded, and discarded evidence pointing to other killers.'"

This case is so disturbing. The positions--of those in favor of moving forward with the execution of Cooper and those opposed to his execution--are at polar extremes.  The perpetrator(s) of Ryan family murders committed heinous acts, but was it Kevin Cooper?   There is a lot of reason to believe the crimes were committed by several men, uh the surviving child originally indicated three white men, (revenge killings by a drug gang on the wrong house?)  So why is California intent on killing Cooper? 

I guess, somebody's gonna get it and it might as well be this crazy, black guy!

Death Penalty Intellectual Framework--Nah, Just Kidding!

When you study law you quickly encounter references to the Restatement of Law addressing various areas of the law.  For instance, there is a Restatement of the Law of Torts, Evidence, Property, and so on.  The Restatements are issued by the American Law Institute, the ALI,  which  is an independent and immensely influential group of legal scholars.  The ALI craft a "restatement" in nearly every area of law positing precisely where the law is, and where law is evolving.  The ALI's influence is so widely-acknowledged that as a law student or lawyer, you become accustomed to reading citations and excerpts to the Restatements in the opinions of every court.  You are meant to take for granted that the Restatements are THE LAW.

Adam Liptak, of the New York Times, reported, today, on the ALI's abandonment of the effort to "restate" the death penalty law.  In effect, the ALI by its actions have pulled the last underpinnings of intellectual support for the state killing of death row inmates in America. 

The Bad Lawyer is not a deep thinker, in fact by definition the Bad Lawyer is, well,  a bad lawyer, but the Bad Lawyer has known many good lawyers--and, notwithstanding, his personal limitations the Bad Lawyer cares deeply about crime and punishment.  The problem with capital punishment is that it runs headlong into the U.S. Constitution's  eighth amendment prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." and the fourteenth amendment's prohibition against State laws that "deprive persons of life, liberty or property without due process of laws, ...or, the equal protection of the laws."   Perhaps this is obvious to you, death is unusual as we have seen on this blog, some folks get the death penalty where other people committing essentially the same act in the same set of circumstances, walk, remember Gaile Owens? 

As Adam Liptak nicely parses the ALI decision, how can the death penalty framework "reconcile the twin goals of individualized decisions about who should be executed and systemic fairness. [The ALI report (on its decision to abandon efforts at a restatement)] added that capital punishment was plagued by racial disparities; was enormously expensive even as many defense lawyers were underpaid and some were incompetent; risked executing innocent people; and was undermined by the politics that come with judicial elections."  All concrns we've talked about on Bad Lawyer.  Now, it is time for the Supreme Court to act to end the farce of constitutional state killing of death row inmates, if a Bad Lawyer can understand these deep thoughts, the Nine certainly can.

Gaile Owens--Death Row

Gaile Owens killed her husband and Tennessee is preparing to kill her.

Mrs. Owens fate is subject to a riveting analysis by the Tennessean's John Siegenthaler which you should read for yourself at the Tennessean website.  Siegenthaler compares and contrasts the Owens case to the nearly identical case of Mary Winkler..  As you will recall Winkler killed her husband and following 67 days of incarceration has custody of her children following her acquittal for murder.  Owens lost her last court appeal and will be put to death if Tennessee's track record holds. 

Can we add arbitrary and capricious to the death penalty debate, here on Bad Lawyer?