In peace and in solidarity for social change,

Jeff Stack

Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation coordinator

 

1) To begin with, for those of you in mid-Missouri, you are welcome to join us for the next mid-state meeting of the

Missouri Campaign for a Moratorium on Executions

7:45-8:45 p.m. (please note later starting time)

Tuesday, 25 April

Columbia Public Library Conference Room A

We?ll be talking about progress with the local moratorium campaign?about 70 area entities (businesses, houses of worship and groups) have now endorsed a call for a death penalty study with a moratorium, other strategies to advance the cause plus your ideas and visions.

Please join us for what time you can. Convened by the Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation. Call Jeff at 573-449-4585 for more info.

Additionally, there is included below in this posting:

2) Media report and comments on the 18 April hearing regarding the ?constitutionality? of Missouri?s lethal injection system;

3) Amnesty International?s new worldwide death penalty report. It finds the United States remains among the top executing countries on the planet, ?Out of Step with Global Trend toward Abolition?As in previous years, the vast majority of executions worldwide were carried out in a tiny handful of countries. In 2005, 94 per cent of all known executions took place in four countries: China, Iran, the Saudi Arabia and the USA.?

 

4) Reflections on the recent murder of Sr. Karen Klimczak apparently by one of the former prisoners she was working to help in the halfway house she ran, Hope House in Buffalo NY. Among other noteworthy aspects of her giving life, Sr. Klimczak was instrumental in bringing together Bud Welch-- whose daughter, Julie, was among 167 people murdered in the horrific Oklahoma City federal-building bombing 11 years ago this week?and Bill McVeigh, father of Timothy who was executed for the crimes. That healing work which she helped facilitate is the prime focus of the posting here.

 

 

2) Media report and comments on the 18 April hearing regarding the ?constitutionality? of Missouri?s lethal injection system.

 

On Tuesday, oral arguments took place over the constitutionality of Missouri?s lethal injection?with Michael Taylor?s life in the balance. The hearing occurred in St. Louis before the 8^th Circuit Court of Appeals federal court. From the perspective of the Mid-Missouri Fellowship of Reconciliation and Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty (our FOR chapter is an affiliate of MADP), the issue of whether the method and execution passes constitutional mustard is kind of bizarre. We believe no matter how state officials would snuff a human life, the death penalty is immoral and unacceptable. Nonetheless, we are grateful for the efforts of Michael?s attorneys to keep him alive and to challenge the legal issues. He had been scheduled to be executed Feb. 1 for the 1989 kidnapping, rape and murder of 15-year-old Ann Harrison of Kansas City?- reprehensible crimes to be sure. We extend condolences to her family and other loved ones, who continue to grieve. We further realize that killing Michael will not ?fix? things, it would only bring into the fold of suffering, another family, another set of parents and other loved ones.  

 

Mary Mifflin, president of MADP?s eastern Missouri chapter, helped coordinate a few dozen spectators to attend the Tuesday hearing. She intuited that the three-judge panel seemed inclined to grant a full hearing on the issue.  They spoke of a "30-30" option, she notes, granting 30 days for discovery and 30 to prepare for a future hearing before the full court. We will pass along details of their decision as it becomes public. There is good news continuing: there will likely be no execution dates set by Missouri?s Supreme Court at least not until this matter is settled. Below is the AP story on the hearing?.

 

Defense: medical deposition critical to lethal injection argument

 

 

Lawyers for a death row inmate said Tuesday they want to depose a doctor and nurse involved in Missouri executions so they can argue their case that a drug combination used to kill condemned prisoners is unconstitutionally cruel punishment.

 

But the state has blocked it - in part over concerns medical personnel would be harassed. The defense said it has agreed to shield their identity.

 

The defense team is not seeking a reprieve of the death penalty for convicted killer Michael Taylor of Kansas City. Attorney Donald Verrilli, Jr., of Washington, told a federal appeals court panel in St. Louis that the three-drug cocktail used in Missouri and around the country could result in a "horrible, excruciating death" if the anesthesia doesn't take effect or wears off.

 

Similar arguments are being made in death penalty cases around the country.

 

But the defense in this case offered an alternative: a single high dose of barbiturate, said to be constitutionally permissible and attain the same result.

 

Verrilli asked the three-judge panel to send the case back to U.S.

District Court in Kansas City to be heard by the original judge assigned to the case.

 

In January, a hearing to weigh the cruel punishment argument was transferred from Judge Scott O. Wright to Judge Fernando Gaitan because Gaitan's schedule could accommodate it more quickly. At the close of the hastily convened, two-day hearing, Gaitan ruled that Missouri's execution protocol is constitutionally permissible.

 

Taylor's defense team said it needs the testimony of the doctor and nurse involved in state executions to argue the case. The defense also wants to present a witness who couldn't make Gaitan's hearing.

 

The defense said that Sri Melethil, an expert in the science of how drugs act in the body over time, would rebut the state's witness, Dr. Mark Dershwitz.

 

Dershwitz has testified that more than enough of the first drug - the sedative sodium pentothal - is given to a condemned prisoner before the second is administered. He has said that it would be "horrible" to administer the 2nd and 3rd drugs to an awake person.

 

Taylor had been scheduled to be executed Feb. 1 in the 1989 kidnapping, rape and murder of 15-year-old Ann Harrison of Kansas City. An appeals court panel denied Taylor's stay of execution, but the full appeals court stayed it. The U.S. Supreme Court, including Justice Samuel Alito on his first day on the high court, refused to lift it.

 

Solicitor Jim Layton of the Missouri Attorney General's office argued that allowing the defense to depose the nurse and doctor involved in executions would "open the door to this exception in every case." He said the state wants to settle the lethal injection protocol question "so we don't have to litigate these questions every time."

 

Layton said the state doesn't believe any additional testimony is needed.

 

The U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments next week in a case brought by Florida death row inmate Clarence Hill about the procedure for lethal injection challenges to be filed in federal court.

 

But the justices refused in February to directly consider whether the drug combination used in executions across the country amounts to unconstitutionally cruel punishment.

 

The execution method is used by the federal government and every state that has capital punishment, except for Nebraska. Interest in lethal injection has escalated in recent months.

 

The parents of both Michael Taylor and Ann Harrison attended Tuesday's hearing. Janel and Bob Harrison said afterward the hearing did not illuminate a case that has dragged on. "There won't ever be closure,"

Janel Harrison said.

 

George and Linda Taylor and their family sat across the aisle. Afterward, the Taylors said they pray everyday for the Harrisons' healing and for their son's life to be spared.

 

"Why do we kill people to show that killing people is wrong?" Linda Taylor asked.

 

Attorneys for 4 other condemned prisoners were expected to file suit Wednesday in federal court in St. Louis challenging Missouri's lethal injection method.

 

(source: Associated Press)

 

 

 

3) Amnesty International?s new worldwide death penalty report finds United States still among top executing countries:

Nation out of step with global trend toward abolition. AI?s news release on the report??

 

 (Washington,  DC) ? During 2005, at least 2,148 people were executed in 22  countries  and  at  least  5,186  people  were  sentenced  to  death in 53  countries,  Amnesty  International disclosed today in its annual report on  the  death penalty worldwide. Across the world 20,000 people are scheduled  to be killed by their own governments.

 

 With  60  executions carried out in 2005, the United States remains one of  the  top  executing  countries,  along  with China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

 Together the four nations accounted for 94 percent of all known executions  worldwide.

 

 Despite  these  shocking figures, the global trend toward abolition of the  death  penalty  continues  to  grow:  the number of countries carrying out  executions  halved  in  the  last  20 years and has dropped for the fourth  consecutive year in a row. In 2005, Mexico and Liberia became the two most  recent examples of countries that have abolished the death penalty.

 

 ?Around    the    world,    public    officials    are    realizing   that

 government-sponsored  punitive  killing  is  unjust and ineffective at its  very  core:  it  is  a  cruel  and unusual form of retribution that has no  deterrent  effect,?  said  Dr.  William  F.  Schulz, Executive Director of  Amnesty  International  USA  (AIUSA).  ?Meanwhile, as one of the four most  active  death  penalty  countries,  the  United  States  remains a glaring  exception  to  this  growing global consensus. AIUSA members are doing all  they can to help put the United States back on the right side of history.?

 

 The  Amnesty  International report uncovers chilling facts about the other  three  top executing countries. In China, a person can be put to death for  as  many as 68 crimes, including non-violent infringements like tax fraud,  embezzlement,  and  drug  offenses.  Lucrative  deals  are made in selling  organs  extracted  from  those who have been executed. China also accounts  for  almost  80  percent of all executions, with data available to Amnesty  International  indicating  some  1,770 individuals put to death last year.

 Undoubtedly  the real figure is much higher, with one Chinese legal expert  recently estimating the true figure at around 8,000.

 

 Iran  executed at least 94 people last year and was the only country known  to have executed juvenile offenders during that period. It put to death at  least  eight  individuals  for  crimes committed while they were children,  including two who were still under age 18 at the time of their execution.

 

 In  Saudi  Arabia,  people  have  been  taken  from their prison cells and  executed  without  knowing  that  a death sentence had been passed against  them.  Others  have  been  tried and sentenced to death in a language they  neither spoke nor read. Saudi Arabia executed at least 86 people in 2005.

 

As in previous years, the vast majority of executions worldwide were carried out in a tiny handful of countries. In 2005, 94 per cent of all known executions took place in four countries: China, Iran, the Saudi Arabia and the USA.

 

 

 For a copy of Amnesty International?s Death Penalty Statistics 2005,  please see:

 ·   World Developments:

 http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-developments2005-eng

 ·   Facts and Figures: http://amnestyusa.org/abolish/figures

 ·   Death Sentences and Executions:

 http://amnestyusa.org/abolish/sentences

    Abolitionist and Retentionist Countries:

    http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-countries-eng

 

 For more on AIUSA?s Program to Abolish the Death Penalty, please see:

 http://amnestyusa.org/abolish.

 

 For more information on the death penalty worldwide, go to  http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-stats2005-eng.

 

 

                                    ###

Kristin Houlé

Program Associate

Program to Abolish the Death Penalty

Amnesty International USA

600 Pennsylvania Ave. SE

Washington, DC 20003

202-544-0200 ext.496

 

 

4) Reflections on the recent murder of Sr. Karen Klimczak.

 Here are some thoughts Jennifer Bishop-Jenkins posted on Tuesday (Jennifer?s sister Nancy Bishop Langert was shot to death along with her husband, Richard Langert, and their unborn child in suburban Chicago in 1990. Jennifer is a board member of  Murder Victims Families for Human Rights)?.

 

?Some of you may have, as I did today on CNN, see the news that Sr. Karen Klimczak was found murdered in Buffalo New York, by one of the ex-cons that she was working to help in the halfway house she ran, Hope House.

 

What I did not know until Bud Welch called us this evening is that this wonderful woman was an ardent abolitionist, and was the woman responsible for announcing to the world that Bud had met with Bill McVeigh, and she helped him work through his agony over that meeting, and helped him to bring his story to the rest of us in the abolition world, a story that has obviously changed the entire national conversation about the death penalty.

 

Bud wanted to make sure that everyone in the national abolition movement knew about Sr. Karen's murder, he told us in so many ways about the amazing work she did, and the important role she played in his personal journey and the dedication she had to helping prisoners out, and opposing the death penalty.

 

 Please help spread the word about this tragic death to your abolition communities.

 

 Below is a clip from Bud's personal story off the MVFHR website (http://www.murdervictimsfamilies.org) that refers to her.

 

Tim McVeigh's guilt or innocence never came up (in the conversation with his father). That was not my purpose in going there. I didn't have to have Bill McVeigh look me in the eye and say, "I'm sorry my son killed your daughter." I didn't have to hear that. But I was able to tell him that I truly understood the pain that he was going through, and that he -- as I -- was a victim of what happened in Oklahoma City. We talked about how many generations of McVeigh's had been in western New York. They were Irish Catholic, I'm Irish Catholic, and I told him that I was a third generation of Welch's in Central Oklahoma. So that was more common ground for us. But after our hour and a half long visit, I got up from the kitchen table and Jennifer came from the other end of the table, and gave me a hug, and we cried, and we sobbed, and I was able to hold her face in my hands -- I'll never forget it -- I was able to hold her face in my hands and tell her, "Honey, the three of us are in this for the rest of our lives. And we can make the most of it if we choose. I don't want your brother to die. And I will do everything in my power to prevent it." And she hugged me again, and I left -- they had left a rental car for me outside of this house so I could drive back into Buffalo, its about 20 miles back into town, and I wanted to get back to Hope House, which is a halfway house for released prisoners, that I had spent about 5 days in and out of. I got to know Sister Karen who runs Hope House, and I knew Sister Rosalyn would be there as well. And I'm driving back to Buffalo, I couldn't see through my glasses because I was still sobbing, I'm driving practically 80, 85 miles per hour -- probably another short time of temporary insanity again, I've thought about it since, I think it was. When I got back to Hope House I sat in the living room and sobbed, and sobbed, and made a total ass out of myself for an hour. I honestly did. But after I got through that period of time, I had all of a sudden -- I don't know what it is to be a born again Christian. I've heard that term all my life. I occasionally become suspicious when someone tells me they're a born again Christian; I don't know why I do that, but I do. But I have never felt closer to God in my life than I did at that moment, once I was through that sobbing, because I felt like there was this load taken completely off my shoulders. I wish I could explain it to you; I wish I could make you understand the way it felt to me.?