Today, Emory University posted an article detailing the talk that Juan Melendez gave to Emory’s new Criminal Law Society.  (Amnesty International sponsored the event.)  It is simply a must-read for those interested in the current criminal justice system in the State of Florida, especially those dealing with the imposition of the death penalty in our state. 

Included in this article:

1.  Juan Melendez’s description of his arrest as he sat with his co-worker, eating lunch, on a fine sunny day;

2.  His recollection of the trial itself — the attorneys, the jury, the presentation of evidence;

3.  His memories of his defense attorney at trial and thereafter;

4.  What it meant to live on Death Row, including the rats, roaches, and temptation for suicide;  and

5.  The miraculous revelation of the true killer and the disrespectful release of Mr. Melendez thereafter by the authorities.

You must read this.  Juan Melendez is telling us quite a bit here….

Roger Hood’s The Death Penalty: a WorldWide Perspective is a great book.  This is true, even if it may be in need of a revised edition, given that this version was published in 2003. 

And, if you sign up for a free trial at Questia.com, you can read his book for free … this is a great thing.  Here’s Amazon.com’s description of Hood’s work:

This is the completely revised and updated third edition of Roger Hood’s classic study on the death penalty. In it he surveys and analyses the status of the death penalty as a punishment worldwide, taking into account the changes that have taken place during the six years since the last edition was published. This new edition is especially valuable at a time when more and more countries are joining the movement to abolish the death penalty worldwide.

Remembering back to a couple of months ago, we posted about three executions taking place in Japan, in just one week. 

Well, here’s how fast things can change:  Japan has effectively nixed capital punishment today.  How?  By the appointment of Keiko Chiba as the country’s new Justice Minister.  A lifelong opponent of the death penalty, it’s highly unlikely that Minister Chiba will sign the necessary execution order for any Japanese inmate to be executed in Japan. 

No signed order, no hanging.

Given that today’s news has a federal judge ordering the deposition of Romell (thx Jeff!) Broom to testify regarding the botched execution last week (for details, check our post here) … a great read on all this mess can be found on Gamso – For the Defense, in an article entitled “Because It’s Who We Are or Want to Be: The Botched Execution Edition.”

Lethal injection should not be a method of execution in this country (see our series) and Jeff Gamso helps us understand why in very blunt terms. It’s worth your time.

The death van silently rolls into town collecting and executing condemned inmates. Falun Gong practitioners suddenly disappear or die unexplained deaths.

Both actions derive from the Chinese government’s corruption and greed.

Substantial evidence demonstrates that China is grossly profiting from the black-market organ trade by using condemned prisoners and Falun Gong captives to supply much needed organs to high-paying customers.

Seeking to avoid backlash from the international community, especially in this highly publicized time of the 2008 Beijing Olympics, China has deceptively utilized the more inconspicuous death vans and Falun Gong captives to continue its illegal organ extraction and transplantation activities.

The death penalty has been employed in China since the dawn of recorded history.[1]

Scholars date the first recorded public execution in China as early as 2601 B.C. [2] According to Epoch Times, there are 320 offenses that are currently punishable by death in China.[3]

Many of those executed in China are not even considered criminals by internationally accepted standards. [4] In fact, sixty-nine percent of the capital crimes covered by the Chinese criminal code are not violent in nature.[5]

For example, capital crimes include engaging in tax fraud, producing counterfeit currency, embezzling state property, demanding or accepting bribes, smuggling contraband across China’s borders, pimping, and killing panda bears. [6] In addition, some capital crimes are vague, which include funding or committing terrorist crimes, belonging to a terrorist organization, and producing, trading, and storing toxic chemicals without authorization.[7]

Defendants sentenced to death are often executed within minutes or hours after the failure of their appeal.[8]

Instead of providing any thought to the comfort of prisoners condemned to death, the emphasis is placed on exhibiting the Chinese government’s swift and firm hand of justice. [9] One research foundation estimated that 7,500-8,000 Chinese people were executed in 2006 alone. [10]

Death vans

In March 2003, the Chinese official press reported that the Yunnan Province purchased eighteen mobile execution units or “death vans.” [11] The death vans shuttle from town to town doling out capital punishment.[12]

These mobile execution units were buses that were bought and converted for 500,000 Yuan each.[13] The vans are windowless, converted twenty-four seat buses that contain a metal bed where the prisoner is strapped down in preparation for execution. [14] The van is also equipped with a video monitor next to the driver’s seat. [15] Once the procedure begins, the doctor inserts the needle, and the police officer presses a button to release the lethal cocktail into the prisoner’s veins.[16]

The Supreme People’s Court has urged all the courts throughout China to purchase these death vans to facilitate efficient executions.[17]

The death vans are more cost-effective, especially for small rural areas, to carry out local executions. [18] Otherwise, these small regions would need to build execution facilities or send their inmates to Beijing to be executed.[19]

Next week: More on the Death Vans and their use for organ transplantation; the methods of execution in China, and more….

[1]. Kelly M. Brown, Comment: Execution for Profit? A Constitutional Analysis of China’s Practice of Harvesting Executed Prisoner’ Organs, 6 Seton Hall Const. L.J. 1029, 1062 (Summer 1996).

[2]. Id.

[3]. Dennis Charleton, Mobile Death Vans – Good for Human Rights?, The Epoch Times, July 2, 2006, ¶ 4, available at http://en.epochtimes.com/news/6-7-2/43479.html (last visited Jul. 28, 2008).

[4]. Organs for Sale: China’s Growing Trade and Ultimate Violation of Prisoners’ Rights: Hearing Before the Subcomm. on Int’l. Ops. and Human Rights of the Comm. on Int’l. Relations, 107th Cong. 8 (2001) [hereinafter Organs] (statement of Cal. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, Member, Comm. on Int’l. Relations).

[5]. People’s Republic of China: Executed “According to Law”?-the Death Penalty in China, Amnesty Int’l (ASA 17/003/2004) Mar. 22, 2004, at 9 [hereinafter Executed], available at http://www.amnesty.ca/amnestynews/upload/asa1700304.pdf (last visited Jul. 28, 2008).

[6]. Id.

[7]. Id. at 10.

[8]. Id. at 44.

[9]. Id. at 45

[10]. People’s Republic of China the Olympics Countdown: Repression of Activists Overshadows Death Penalty and Media Reforms, Amnesty Int’l (ASA 17/015/2007), Apr. 2007, at 8 [hereinafter Repression], available at http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA17/015/2007/en/dom-ASA170152007en.pdf (last visited July 28, 2008).

[11]. Executed, supra note 5, at 2.

[12]. Calum MacLeod, China Makes Ultimate Punishment Mobile, USA Today, June 15, 2006, ¶ 3, available at http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-06-14-death-van_x.htm (last visited July 28, 2008).

[13]. Executed, supra note 5, at 2. 500, 000 Yuan equals $60,000 USD.

[14]. Stop Carers Killing, Amnesty Int’l (ACT 50/009/2007), Sept. 27, 2007, at 3 [hereinafter Carers], available at http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ACT50/009/2007/en/dom-ACT500092007en.pdf (last visited July 28, 2008).

[15]. Id.

[16]. Id.

[17]. Id.

[18]. MacLeod, supra note 12, ¶ 14.

[19]. Id. ¶¶ 14, 20.

The next entry in our Friday series — Friday’s Legal Memo, an In-depth Look at the Law — educates us on how capital punishment is administered in China. 

Its author is our invaluable legal intern, Sin-Ting Mary Liu, and her qualifications for providing us with this trusted work are:

EDUCATION & TRAINING

JURIS DOCTOR CANDIDATE, Nova Southeastern University, Expected Graduation 2010

GPA – 3.72

Class Rank – 5 (Top 2%)

Honors
• Dean’s List
• Fall 2007 Highest Grade Award -Legal research and writing
• Spring 2008 Highest Grade Award -Legal research and writing
• ILSA JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL AND COMPARATIVE LAW, Staff Member – editing, source pulling, and Bluebooking multiple journal articles
• Nova Southeastern University – Shepard Broad Law Center Merit Scholarship Award

Activities
• Phi Alpha Delta (PAD) – Member
• American Bar Association (ABA) – Student Member
• Asian Pacific American Law Students Association (APALSA) – Member

Special Areas of Legal Interest
• Criminal Law
• Employment Law
• Biotechnology
• Family Law

BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN ADVERTISING, University of Florida, 1994
• Minor in East Asian Languages and Literature

DALE CARNEGIE TRAINING COURSE, 1997 – 1998 Continue Reading Author of Series on China’s Death Penalty: Sin-Ting Mary Liu

Romell Broom was sentenced to die for the rape and murder of Tryna Middleton by the State of Ohio and last Tuesday, Mr. Broom was strapped to a gurney and his execution by lethal injection began. 

The 2+ Hour Failed Execution

Except they couldn’t find a vein in which to insert the needle.  They tried his arms.  They tried his legs.  Broom lay there, tied to the table by long leather straps covering the length of his body.  Imagine this being done to you.

Broom lay there for OVER TWO HOURS while lab techs tried to kill him.  They failed.  Broom went back to his Death Row cell, and his execution was “rescheduled.”  The Governor of the State of Ohio was contacted about the problem and he ordered a one week “postponement.”

Ohio Has Scheduled a Second Execution

Well, now Broom’s execution — again, by lethal injection — has been put back on the calendar, and a national outcry is joining with the arguments of his lawyers that this amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.   According to his counsel, this event has traumatized inmate Broom.  That’s probably an understatement. 

Legal Arguments Based Upon Cruel and Unusual Punishment are Being Advanced in the Face of Willie Francis Precedent

Broom’s attorneys — as well as organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union — are advancing the argument that Governor Strickland should grant clemency to Broom and commute his sentence to one of life imprisonment because of this botched execution.  Of course, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that a second execution is not, in and of itself, cruel and unusual.  Those in the know with their legal death penalty history will remember the Louisiana case of 16 year old Willie Francis, where an electric chair execution failed and the issue of whether or not a second try at killing Francis would be cruel and unusual.  In Francis v. Resweber, the High Court held second executions were constitutional.

Florida’s Contribution — the Lesson of Angel Diaz

Here in Florida, we remember the case a couple of years back where the execution of Angel Diaz was excruciating, as the executioners pushed the needs through his veins and into muscle tissue — which meant Mr. Diaz took over half an hour to die, laying there in front of everyone on that gurney.  After that botched business, the State of Florida stopped lethal injection executions for a period of time.  Florida resumed executing inmates in 2008, under purportedly new and better injection procedures. 

Maybe Ohio needs to look at its own procedures instead of cavalierly putting Broom’s name back on its death calendar.  Or maybe they should just stop executing people, period….

North Carolina

The video below is a ten minute documentary by Scott Langley, where a North Carolina Warden gives a detailed tour of Death Row, and tells what happens during an execution — from last phone calls, to the execution itself and its aftermath.

Texas

The Associated Press has placed an interview online — they’re calling it an “interactive” — where a Texas Warden who oversaw nine executions by lethal injection gives a tour of the Death House and an explanation, step by step, of his job during an execution. 

http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_national/texas_execution/index.html?SITE=TXSAE

Due to AP’s copyright/fair use protections, the actual video cannot be placed here on the site.  Instead, only the link to their site can be shown.  Please take the time to click on the above link, and watch this short video. It is worth your time. 

Warning:  these tours are chilling, and may leave you in a somber mood for the rest of the day.

Cameron Todd Willingham’s story is sad and tragic and true, and it’s a great thing that there is more and more media coverage of how this innocent man was executed by the State of Texas.   

Hopefully, the travesty of justice in the Cameron Todd Willingham case will remind us all that there are real people setting on Death Row in this country today who are innocent of the crimes of which they are convicted … and that in some instances, there are correlated evildoers enjoying their freedom while they should be the ones being punished for their acts.

The Innocence Project List

The Innocence Project has started an online list of individuals who have been sitting on Death Row in this country — convicted and innocent.  Currently, the site has not added Mr. Willingham’s name to the list — and there may be more names out there that aren’t shown on the IP’s site (I’d appreciate being notified of others, by the way), but these names are there, and it’s worth a visit to the Innocence Project page to read their stories:

Kirk Bloodsworth

Rolando Cruz 

Alejandro Hernandez

Verneal Jimerson 

Dennis Williams

Robert Miller

Ron Williamson

Ronald Jones

Earl Washington

Frank Lee Smith

Charles Irvin Fain

Ray Krone

Nicholas Yarris

Ryan Matthews

Curtis McCarty

Kennedy Brewer

Michael Blair

John Grisham chose a story about the death penalty for his first non-fiction novel, and it’s well worth the read.  The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, has been out for awhile — so long in fact, that you can buy a used copy on Amazon for a buck ninety-nine ($1.99).   It’s particularly compelling in light of the case of Cameron Todd Willingham — an innocent man executed by the State of Texas with scientific evidence recently proving his innocence.

What’s Grisham’s book about?

It’s a true story, which began over 25 years ago when a young cocktail waitress was raped and murdered, and the crime remained unsolved for 5 years.  All this time, the authorities believed that two specific men were responsible, and after these five years had passed, they ended up arresting the two guys, Ron Williamson and Dennis Fritz, for murder. 

They had no physical evidence.  The case went to a jury based solely on junk science and the testimony of a convict or two.  Ron Williamson was sent to death row; his pal got life in prison.

Eerie to read, as you ponder the Willingham case….