No alla Pena di Morte - NO to the Death penalty

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NO alla Pena di Morte
Campagna Internazionale

NEW YORK, 18 GIU - L'Ohio ha eseguito la condanna a morte di un uomo di 42 anni, Ernest Martin, giudicato colpevole di aver ucciso nel 1983 il proprietario settantenne di una drogheria.

Martin e' morto per un'iniezione letale alle 10:11 locali (le 16:11 in Italia) nel carcere di Lucasville. Nella stessa camera della morte sono previste prima della fine del mese altre due esecuzioni, quelle di Lewis Williams e Jerome Campbell.

Il detenuto ha proclamato fino all'ultimo la propria innocenza, sostenendo che a sparare sarebbe stato un'altra persona, di cui conosceva solo il soprannome 'Slim'.

Con quella di Martin, salgono a 859 le condanne a morte eseguite negli Usa da quando e' stata reintrodotta la pena capitale nel 1976. Dall'inizio del 2003, sono 39 le persone esse a morte negli Stati Uniti.

Columbus Dispatch -

OHIO: Year's 3rd execution attracts little attention

Although Ernest Martin's execution yesterday was hardly mundane, capital punishment has become almost routine in Ohio with 8 men put to death since 1999, 3 of them this year.

2 more executions are scheduled next week and another in July.

Martin, 42, of Cleveland, died by injection yesterday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility near Lucasville after spending more than 4 hours on the phone with his 67-year-old mother and making a lengthy final statement in which he likened his treatment to the persecution of Jesus Christ.

It was 11 minutes from the time Martin entered the prison death chamber until he was pronounced dead by Scioto County Coroner Dr. Terry A. Johnson at 10:11 a.m. Martin received the death penalty for murdering Cleveland drugstore owner Robert Robinson, 70, on Jan. 21, 1983.

The mood surrounding executions has changed dramatically since Feb. 19, 1999, when Wilford Berry, known as "the Volunteer," became the 1st man executed in Ohio in 36 years.

The media frenzy has quieted, the number of protesters has dwindled with the switch to daytime executions, and even the bell in the Trinity Episcopal Church in Downtown Columbus - which tolled for all 7 previous executions - was silent yesterday, by an oversight, Rev. Richard Burnett said.

Things are running so smoothly that Attorney General Jim Petro wasn't even in the country for the last execution, and prisons chief Reginald A. Wilkinson says he may not need to be present for all future executions.

"I'm satisfied that the process has gone well," Wilkinson said. "We try not to have so much routine that we appear callous about the process."

Many news organizations have stopped staffing the events, and what were locally written stories on Page 1 have turned into abbreviated wire accounts buried inside the paper. The Dispatch for the first time did not write a breaking story for its Web site once the execution had taken place.

Martin was the third inmate sentenced to death after Ohio resurrected the death penalty in 1981; the law had been ruled unconstitutional.

He claimed his innocence, fighting his conviction in court for 2 decades. Recently, he claimed he was mentally retarded, but he abruptly dropped the claim and argued that his life should be spared because he had incompetent legal counsel.

The courts batted down all his appeals, most recently the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday. Gov. Bob Taft likewise rejected Martin's clemency plea.

Strapped to the lethal-injection table, Martin made a 2 to 3-minute statement - the longest final words to date - that one media witness described as "calm, well-spoken and eloquent."

"I know that God is in control of all of this. . . . Just as Jesus Christ was spat on and slandered, and people received money for false testimony, I'm being treated the same way Christ was treated. But I don't hold no grudges against no one."

Martin asked for forgiveness for the media before addressing comments to his family. His sister, Debra Reese, and nephew, Curtis Martin, witnessed his execution.

"I thank God for allowing me to have the life I had with you all, even though it wasn't a good life. Please hug Momma for me."

When Martin was pronounced dead, Reese was overheard to say, "He's finally set free. Don't worry. We'll see him again."

There were no witnesses from the victim's family, the 1st time that has happened for any execution since they were renewed in 1999.

2 church officials said people should not assume that executions are becoming routine or that the public is unconcerned.

Burnett said the fact that the state "has chosen to respond to violence with an act of violence is not something that people get immune to."

The Interfaith Coalition to Stop Executions is continuing its push for the eventual abolition of capital punishment, he said.

The Rev. Neil Kookoothe, associate pastor of St. Clarence Roman Catholic Church in North Olmsted, has protested outside the prison at all 8 executions.

He has had enough time to refine his sandwichboard messages with photos of the executed inmates and the names of those remaining on death row.

"From our perspective, executions will never be routine," Kookoothe said.

"They're dealing with the process. We're dealing with the human being."

Dayton Daily News -

OHIO:Pace of executions has picked up in Ohio---State is 3rd this year behind Texas, Oklahoma

With 3 executions so far in 2003 and a 4th planned for Friday, Ohio is the 3rd leading state behind Texas and Oklahoma for carrying out the ultimate penalty this year.

The pace of executions in Ohio has quickened to the point that a national anti-death penalty group believes the Buckeye State could soon become 2nd in the nation for executions per year.

"Ohio threatens to eclipse states like Missouri and Oklahoma, and could become 2nd only to Texas," said David Elliot, spokesman for the Washington-based National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "Ohio is basically coming up to where Georgia, Florida and Virginia were" a few years ago. "It's a very disturbing trend."

The upswing in Ohio executions comes as executions across the nation have declined. U.S. executions peaked at 98 in 1999, with 71 in 2002 and 39 so far in 2003. All told, 3,525 U.S. convicts are on death row.

Some partially attribute Ohio's execution spate to tough state and federal judges. But everybody agrees a big reason is that for many condemned men on the nation's 6th-largest death row, time is simply running out.

"The reality is that for some of these, it's been nearly 20 years since they've been sentenced and they're at the end of their appeals," said Kim Norris, spokeswoman for Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro. She said the 8 men put to death in Ohio since the state resumed executions in 1999 had spent an average of more than 16 years on death row.

The appellate review has been appropriate, she said, but it's time for some executions to move forward.

Norris said it's unclear how many other Ohio inmates could face execution this year. But 59 of the 203 men on death row at Mansfield Correctional Institution have been awaiting execution for at least 15 years.

With last Wednesday's lethal injection of Ernest Martin, Ohio has executed 3 men so far this year ï¿½ the same number put to death by the state in all of 2002.

That puts Ohio 3rd in executions in 2003, behind Texas with 16 and Oklahoma with 9, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. Ohio, the only state with more executions scheduled in June, could be up to 4 by Friday.

Ohio was prepared to execute 2 death row inmates this week. But late Friday, the Ohio Supreme Court stayed the execution of Lewis Williams, 44, who had been scheduled to die Tuesday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility at Lucasville.

The stay is to let a Cuyahoga County judge hold a hearing Monday to determine whether Williams, who murdered an elderly Cleveland woman in her home in 1983, is mentally retarded. Williams is seeking to withdraw his claim of retardation. The U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled it unconstitutional to execute people with retardation. Gov. Bob Taft on Friday denied clemency for Williams.

Jerome Campbell, 42, is to die Friday for the 1988 aggravated murder of an elderly man in Cincinnati. The Ohio Parole Board recommended that Taft commute Campbell's death sentence to life in prison after recent DNA testing showed a drop of blood on Campbell's shoe was his own, not the victim's. Taft has not decided on the clemency request.

An appeals court Friday ruled against Campbell's bid for a new trial, saying the DNA evidence would not have changed the outcome of the case. His attorneys with the Ohio Public Defender's office plan an appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court.

One other Ohio inmate has a "serious" execution date, having exhausted all appeals. Richard Cooey, 36, is to be executed July 24 for the 1986 abduction, rape and murder of 2 University of Akron students.

Other executions could occur this year, Norris said, depending on how the courts rule on inmate appeals.

Ohio suspended executions in 1963, and there were no executions in the United States from 1967 to 1977, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down old death penalty laws as unconstitutional.

In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled capital punishment is constitutional under certain circumstances, and many states wrote laws that conformed to the decision. Ohio's death penalty law went into effect in 1981, but there were no executions until 1999.

Ohio has put to death only 8 convicts since then, making it 18th among the 38 states that have a death penalty on the books.

Ohio might have had more executions by now, but former Gov. Richard Celeste in the 1990s commuted the sentences of several inmates closest to being put to death, said Jeff Gamso, a Toledo attorney who represents 11 condemned men.

Texas leads the nation in executions since 1976 with 305, followed by Virginia with 88, Oklahoma with 64 and Missouri with 60.

On the other side of the spectrum, California's death row of 622 inmates is 3 times the size of Ohio's, yet California has executed only 11 convicts since resuming executions in 1992. 6 of the 38 states with a death penalty haven't executed anyone.

"What you have is a real checkerboard reality when it comes to the death penalty," said Elliot of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "Every state is a culture unto itself. You don't have one death penalty system in the United States; you have 38."

Where California's state and federal courts tend to be more liberal, Ohio's courts have moved to the political right and are more likely than before to allow executions, Elliot said.

Gamso agreed. "Our state and our federal government are particularly unwilling to revisit the merits of convictions," he said. "The courts don't take the claims seriously anymore."

In addition, changes on both the federal and state levels are accelerating the execution process, he said. Congress has enacted tighter time frames for federal courts to accept certain pleadings, making it harder for defendants to raise new claims, Gamso said. In Ohio, 1996 legislation and a 1994 state constitutional amendment have sped up the process.

But Gamso acknowledged that Ohio's upswing is largely due to the inevitability of the legal system.

"Part of it is simply the calendar," he said. "After a certain amount of time, there stops being courts to go to."