Something is amok on the CATE server and i am being asked for an additional password and I have no idea what it could be. I have written to the webmanager but i know they are not working till monday. Therefore
If you are submitting Asha final projects send them to me as an email attachment (several are already in the CATE box and can be resent) and if you are doing your final chapters of prisoners wife attach them to this post
If you are finished your self assessment you can wait to send it or send it to me as an email attachment
sorry for this but i can do nothing if the computer doesnt cooperate
did you see the death penalty process in Cali is now declared to be unconstitutional?
December 17, 2006 at 10:44 pm |
interesting article….but i dont think this is over yet…much like the draft….this is from CBS….
California’s Death Penalty Found Unconstitutional
(CBS 5 / AP / BCN) SAN JOSE Faced with grim testimony of poorly trained executioners operating in cramped, dimly lit quarters, a federal judge in San Jose on Friday declared California’s execution procedure unconstitutional.
California’s “implementation of lethal injection is broken,” U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel wrote in a 17-page ruling. “But it can be fixed.”
The decision is expected to further delay executions as Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s staff revises execution procedures.
Fogel said the case presented the narrow question of whether a three-drug cocktail administered by San Quentin State Prison officials is so painful that it “offends” the Eighth Amendment ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.”
Fogel said he was compelled “to answer that question in the affirmative,” because of the possibility that a condemned inmate could experience excruciating and “extreme pain.”
“Defendants’ implementation of California’s lethal-injection protocol lacks both reliability and transparency,” Fogel ruled in the appeal of convicted killer Michael Morales.
Fogel reached his decision after holding a four-day hearing in September that revealed prison guards were inadequately trained to participate in executions. One prison official who was part of the execution team had been sanctioned for smuggling drugs into San Quentin.
Drugs were not properly accounted for, at times they weren’t properly mixed, and unused drugs were not returned to the prison’s pharmacy. Executioners worked in the crowded chamber under dim lights.
“The evidence is more than adequate to establish a constitutional violation,” Fogel said. “In light of the substantial questions raised by the records of previous executions, defendants’ actions and failures to act have resulted in an undue and unnecessary risk of an Eighth Amendment violation. This is intolerable under the Constitution.”
Fogel said he was satisfied that the three drugs could kill an inmate without unnecessary pain, but not the way the state has been carrying out executions. But Fogel wondered whether the combination of drugs was necessary, given that the American Veterinarian Association said it would not euthanize animals the same way California executes inmates.
He demanded Schwarzenegger work with prison officials to revise the state’s execution procedure, but stopped short of demanding that medical professionals participate.
“The administration will review the lethal injection protocol to make certain the protocol and its implementation are
constitutional,” said Andrea Lynn Hoch, the governor’s legal affairs secretary. “Gov. Schwarzenegger will continue to defend the death penalty and ensure the will of the people is represented throughout the ongoing court proceedings.”
Fogel has given state officials 30 days to file a response to his ruling.
A spokesman for outgoing California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said that the decision about what next step to take, whether to revise the procedure as Fogel suggests or to appeal Fogel’s ruling, rests with Schwarzenegger.
“The ball’s pretty much in the governor’s court,” attorney general’s spokesman Nathan Barankin said.
Deborah Denno, a lethal injection expert at Fordham University Law School, said the decision is “definitely going to delay executions” in the short term. She said it was likely to give lethal injection a black eye, but not necessarily end its use.
“I think in the end it means there’s going to be a lot more scrutiny in the way people are executed,” she said. “Whether it
will make (executions) more humane, I don’t know.”
Santa Clara University law professor Gerald Uelmen, part of the 1995 legal “dream team” that successfully defended football star O.J. Simpson for murder, called Fogel’s ruling “very cautious and restrained.”
But Uelmen believes that national opinion about capital punishment is shifting: “I think there’s a definite erosion of support for the death penalty.”
Morales, 47, of Stockton, was sentenced to death in 1983 for the 1981 brutal rape and murder of Lodi resident Terri Winchell, 17. She was found beaten and stabbed in a secluded vineyard 25 years ago.
In February, Morales was just hours away from dying by lethal injection when Fogel effectively halted the execution over questions about the procedure’s constitutionality amid concerns that inmates might suffer excruciating deaths.
Fogel found substantial evidence that the last six men executed at San Quentin might have been conscious because they were still breathing when lethal drugs were administered.
He ordered anesthesiologists to be on hand, or demanded that a licensed medical professional inject a large, fatal dose of a sedative instead of the additional paralyzing agent and heart-stopping drugs used. No medical professional, however, was willing to participate.
Attorneys for Morales alleged in a lawsuit that Morales might appear unconscious after being injected with a sedative, but internally he would succumb to excruciating pain, “burning veins and heart failure,” once the paralyzing and the death drug were administered.
Friday’s California decision is the latest in a nationwide challenge to lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment and came just hours after Florida Gov. Jeb Bush suspended all executions in that state after a botched execution this week.
Civil rights groups immediately hailed the decision.
“Every day the evidence mounts that the United States is using unacceptably cruel methods to put people to death,” said Jamie Fellner, a Human Rights Watch director.
Lethal injection is the preferred execution method in 37 states.
Last month, a federal judge declared Missouri’s injection method, which is similar to California’s, unconstitutional.
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld executions — by hanging, firing squad, electric chair and gas chamber — despite the pain they might cause, but has left unsettled the issue of whether the pain is unconstitutionally excessive.
There are currently more than 650 men and women on California’s death row, the nation’s largest.
The California case is Morales v. Tilton, 06-219.
December 17, 2006 at 10:46 pm |
judith -my peilcan bay assignment never got graded, nor did the STP#3..but i think thats nuber 2….?
December 18, 2006 at 4:06 am |
Hey Judith:
I was listening to this on the radio. What do you think will happen? It seems that each time a major appeal goes through like this, we get a little closer at abolishing the death penalty.
December 18, 2006 at 5:27 am |
Corinne – I am very interested in what will happen next as well. I wonder how long this revision of procedures will take. However I think that the US as a whole is far from abolishing the death penalty with all of the people Bush appointed to the Supreme court district.