The Supreme Court has overturned the death sentence for a man who has been on death row since 1997 because of the racist testimony of a witness called by his own lawyers. On Wednesday, the court decided 6-2 to give Duane Buck another chance. Buck was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and her male friend, and wounding his own stepsister, with a shotgun in Texas in 1995.

During the sentencing phase of the trial in 1997, Buck’s own defense lawyers knowingly called an expert witness to the stand who claimed that Buck ran a higher risk of posing a danger in the future because he is black. “It’s a sad commentary that minorities–Hispanics and black people–are over-represented in the criminal justice system,” said former prison psychiatrist Dr. Walter Quijano.

ICYMI: Today #SCOTUS ruled in favor of a new sentencing hearing for our client, #DuaneBuck. Read our statement: https://t.co/xlU5mo1zPP pic.twitter.com/CxEOJPTgil

— Legal Defense Fund (@NAACP_LDF) February 22, 2017

The jury listened to Quijano and sentenced Buck to death. Then began Buck’s long series of appeals. He appealed the original sentence, but didn’t raise the issue of ineffective assistance of counsel. A state court affirmed his sentence. Then Buck’s lawyer filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, but it didn’t mention Quijano or his testimony. But then it was discovered that Quijano had given racist testimony in several other cases. Some of those convicted raised claims in federal court in 2000, and they were granted new sentencing hearings.

Duane Buck’s trial lawyer, who put on testimony that his own client was dangerous for being black, still works in the 208th court every day.

— Franklin Bynum (@bynumlaw) February 22, 2017

Buck’s lawyer filed a second habeas petition, claiming ineffective assistance of counsel by the trial lawyers, but it was filed in state court and not in federal. Then-Texas Attorney General John Cornyn said that because Buck’s own defense had called Quijano as a witness, there was no mistake made by the state and therefore nothing that needed to be fixed. The fact that Buck didn’t mention Quijano in the first habeas corpus was the final nail in the coffin.

In the new petition, filed in October, Buck’s defense cited “extraordinary circumstances” in order to pursue the ineffective assistance of counsel claims, even though that legally should have been done in the first place. This time SCOTUS listened. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority decision that the testimony in 1997 by Quijano claimed “that the color of Buck’s skin made him more deserving of execution. No competent defense attorney would introduce such evidence about his own client.”

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, saying that the heinousness of Buck’s crime and his lack of remorse justify the death penalty. But, Buck will now be able to have a new hearing on his sentence.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The serial killer known as the “Grim Sleeper” was sentenced to death by the Los Angeles County Superior Court on Wednesday. His real name is Lonnie David Franklin Jr, now 63. His story plays like a horror movie.

Franklin used to work as a garbage collector in Los Angeles, where he killed at least 10 young women in the span of 22 years, from 1985 to 2007. He got his nickname because he seemed to be inactive between 1988 and 2002. But detectives believe he might have killed many more women within those years, and maybe wasn’t inactive at all.

Franklin faced the court on Wednesday morning with many family members of his victims present. He was convicted earlier this year of killing ten women. Investigators said he repeatedly denied killing anyone, and he didn’t utter a word at the trial. His defense lawyers suggested the real killer was someone else, and asked for his life to be spared.

The "Grim Sleeper" Lonnie David Franklin Jr. is sentenced to death after killing 10 women in South LA from 1985-2007 pic.twitter.com/8RfDRIEYrG

— AJ+ (@ajplus) August 10, 2016

Some people in the community say the “Grim Sleeper” was probably able to carry on his horrible killings for so long because he targeted poor, black women who were either drug addicts or prostitutes. Such women were not always reported missing, and were not high priorities for police.

In most of the murders, Franklin shot them and then left them in the trash or along the road. But one of his shooting victims managed to get away, and her statement, combined with DNA and ballistic evidence, led to Franklin’s conviction.

Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman described Franklin in her brief as “a psychopathic, sadistic serial killer who takes joy in inflicting pain on women and killing them.”

The mother of one victim said in court that he took her daughter’s life and put her in a trash bag. She hoped life in jail would become his trash bag, she said. But Judge Kathleen Kennedy gave him the death penalty, saying, “This is not a sentence of vengeance.” She added: “It’s justice.”

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Hey y’all!

On Monday, 93-year-old Oskar Groening, an SS guard assigned to Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, was charged with 300,000 counts of accessory to murder by German prosecutors. Not many of us were alive to experience World War II, but I know someone who was around back then who tells stories like it happened just yesterday. My grandmother, also 93, recounts stories from that time, and my grandfather’s brother was a B-24 bomber pilot who was killed in France in 1944.

So many families all over the world were affected by that war, most notably by one of the most vile men this world has ever seen — Adolf Hitler. More than a million people lost their lives between 1935 – 1945. Groening, in particular, has always been very open about his experiences at the concentration camp. He recounted a horrendous story to German Magazine Der Spiegel in 2005 of witnessing “another SS soldier grab the baby by the legs and smashed the baby’s head against the iron side of a truck until it was silent.”

German authorities are able to charge Groening with these 300,000 counts thanks to the trial of former camp guard John Demjanjuk in 2011. In a legal first in Germany, a Munich court found that simply demonstrating Demjanjuk’s employment at the camp, rather than his involvement in specific murders, was enough to implicate him in the killings committed there. Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years of imprisonment for helping the Nazis kill almost 30,000 Jews during his time at the Sobibór extermination camp in German-occupied Poland during World War II. Demjanjuk was sentenced to five years in jail, which seems a bit unfair given the extent of the crimes, but at 91 a life sentence could possibly only be a few more years than that.

It’s frustrating to know that people like Groening and Demjanjuk were able to live long lives without answering for what they had done. I know that it is difficult to really say what they actually took part in and how much fear they may have had if they went against Hitler, but at some point they made a decision to participate, and that is something they have to pay for. There can be so much hatred and evil in a single person.

There are still more than 20 people remaining for the German courts to prosecute in conjunction to war crimes from War World II, but for now focusing on Oskar Groening is good enough. Every family deserves justice when it comes to the death of loved ones.

In Oskar Groening’s case it isn’t just the families who deserve justice — it is the entire world.

—

Allison Dawson (@AllyD528) Born in Germany, raised in Mississippi and Texas. Graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University. Currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative.

Featured image courtesy of [leliebloem via Flickr]

Allison Dawson

Allison Dawson was born in Germany and raised in Mississippi and Texas. A graduate of Texas Tech University and Arizona State University, she’s currently dedicating her life to studying for the LSAT. Twitter junkie. Conservative. Get in touch with Allison at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post 93 Year Old Charged With 300,000 Counts of Accessory to Murder appeared first on Law Street.

It is getting harder and harder for states to kill people.

Four executions by lethal injection have been botched in the past calendar year. In July, it took two hours for an Arizona inmate to die after he was given 15 times the dose of drugs usually used. And, with the supply of those drugs running out fast, it looks like America is in store for even more of these gruesome mishaps. Cries are growing louder and louder for an end to the death penalty as more and more executions are botched.

Yep, neither the number of innocent people on death row nor the inhuman delays that keep prisoners guessing if and when they will be killed are responsible for the most recent national conversation about the death penalty. Instead, it’s a lack of efficiency in our execution tactics that has Americans up in arms.

Don’t fret, death penalty supporters! There is a simple solution to this problem. It just isn’t as pretty or as comforting as lethal injection.

A federal judge recently called for replacing lethal injection with the firing squad, and his argument is pretty sound:

Lethal injection uses medication to make an execution look peaceful. Since one of the drugs used paralyzes the inmate, all anyone sees is a person slowly falling asleep. U.S. 9th Circuit Court Chief Judge Alex Kozinski has a problem with that:

Executions are, in fact, brutal, savage events, and nothing the state tries to do can mask that reality. Nor should we. If we as a society want to carry out executions, we should be willing to face the fact that the state is committing a horrendous brutality on our behalf.

Kozinski’s argument against lethal injection is a moral one. He believes that America needs to look at the ugliness of executions and reckon with what they have wrought upon their fellow man.

I agree that the firing squad should be used, but I would like to go one step further in arguing why. The firing squad isn’t just a moral solution to our death penalty crisis. It’s also a much more practical way to end the lives of our most degenerate citizens. It is time for this nation to abandon its experiment with lethal injection and join Somalia in the practice of shooting its citizens.

Lethal injections have become a crapshoot, where people who aren’t even medical officials mix untested drugs to try their best to kill someone. There is a lot of room for error.

Firing squads, on the other hand, are almost impossible to screw up. Five marksmen shoot the sitting and sedated inmate in the heart with rifles. One of the marksmen is firing a blank so none of them know who fired a kill shot, but the odds of four trained shooters missing their target is highly unlikely. A guaranteed quick, albeit bloody, death is the primary benefit of the firing squad.

But wait, there’s more! Death by firing squad is one of the only execution tactics that preserves the organs for donation (except for the heart, obviously). There are tangible benefits!

Sure, like all good things, there are some downsides to the firing squad. For one, shooting people is surprisingly expensive. The salaries of the five shooters and the cost of the rifles, chair, hood, and sedative all add up to the hefty price of $165,000. But, can we as a society really put a price on justice?

Well, yes. The current price of justice is $1,286.86. That is how much it costs to kill someone with the newest drug cocktail. You know, the one that isn’t even working the way it is supposed to. I’m willing to pay a little more in taxes if it means fewer criminals gasping and wheezing for two hours on a prison gurney.

There’s also the slight problem that being shot in the heart by four bullets is a gruesome way to die. That is why we as a society decided on lethal injection in the first place. All we see is a bad person falling asleep. It’s a sanitary and supposedly peaceful end.

But, as Kozinski reminds us, executions are not supposed to be pretty. The state is murdering one of its own citizens. It is supposed to be gruesome. We shouldn’t hide from this reality. If we are going to allow states to continue killing the people they are supposed to protect, we should accept the barbaric nature of this policy. There are few forms of death that embrace this philosophy more than exploding a man’s heart with four small pieces of lead.

America needs to change its course if lethal injections continue to be botched. The firing squad is the most effective way of killing criminals quickly and humanely.

Or, we could just repeal the death penalty, save billions of dollars, and bring our criminal justice system up to the ethical standard of the rest of the developed world.

But that would be silly. Open fire!

—

Eric Essagof (@ericmessagof) is a student at The George Washington University majoring in Political Science. He writes about how decisions made in DC impact the rest of the country. He is a Twitter addict, hip-hop fan, and intramural sports referee in his spare time. Contact Eric at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [T Woodward via Flickr]

Eric Essagof

Eric Essagof attended The George Washington University majoring in Political Science. He writes about how decisions made in DC impact the rest of the country. He is a Twitter addict, hip-hop fan, and intramural sports referee in his spare time. Contact Eric at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post It’s Time To Bring Back The Firing Squad appeared first on Law Street.

In a letter to a congressional subcommittee on Nov. 21, American Bar Association President (ABA) James Silkenat voiced his support for the Restore Honor to Service Members Act, a bill that would upgrade the statuses of gay and lesbian veterans discharged under Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT.)

Addressing chairman Joe Wilson and ranking member Susan Davis of the Armed Services Committee, Silkenat characterized the bill as comprising “the final steps necessary to bring about an end to the unfortunate remnants of [DADT],” adding, “this legislation is crucial for the thousands of our veterans who are still experiencing the consequences of that policy and its even more oppressive predecessors.

The bill would create new panels to hear cases from veterans who, because of the discriminatory nature of previous laws, were kicked out of the armed forces. It aims not only to honor due federal benefits for those veterans, but also to remove the blemish of their discharge, and the unfair consequences incurred as a result. However, it falls short of providing monetary recompensation for lost wages and other damages.

The ABA has had a long history of supporting gay rights: first, by opposing Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in 1993 when it was enacted, and later in 2010, when the organization came out in support of gay marriage. Silkenat says that, in this case, because of the “sensitive special status of the armed forces” and ABA’s relationship with the Department of Defense, he was compelled to make his stance known.

Despite its 138 cosponsors, the bill has a very slim chance of making it out of the notoriously rigid Armed Services Committee. Compounding its grim odds is the fact that, of those 138 cosponsors, only one is Republican. In the Republican-controlled House, that alone is a death sentence.

It need not be said that blatant injustices like the ones targeted in the new bill should stoke a rallying cry in the legal community. If the politicians on the Hill can’t scrub the ugly anachronism of homophobia from our society then, in the spirit of Thurgood Marshall, it seems the only thing left to do is to go “through the courts.” So, channeling my inner Stephen Colbert, I give a tip of the hat to you Mr. Silkenat, and a wag of the finger to you, House Republicans.

[ABA Journal]

—

Featured image courtesy of [DVIDSHUB/Sgt. Randall Clinton via Flickr]

Jimmy Hoover

Jimmy Hoover is a graduate of the University of Maryland College Park and formerly an intern at Law Street Media. Contact Jimmy at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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