Moratorium on Executions

Washington State Governor Jay Inslee issues a moratorium on executions while he is in office.

Thank you, Governor Inslee.

http://www.kvewtv.com/article/2014/feb/11/gov-jay-inslee-announces-capital-punishment-morato/

http://seattletimes.com/html/editorials/2022914195_editdeathpenalty16xml.html

Update on Mr. Gentry’s status, Death Row, WA State, Walla Walla, WA State Penitentiary

Federal court removes hold on Kitsap killer's execution :
Kitsap Sun   2014/feb. 5   

“Wednesday, February 5, 2014 ... Although Judge Robert Lasnik's removal of the stay indicates, for now, the federal courts will allow the execution to take place, a state hold on Gentry's sentence still is in place until at least Wednesday and…” the article also indicated more appeals are pending dealing with retesting DNA.

This means we need to be prepared and work to express our desires to our legislators and our Governor:
Do we want to be responsible for killing another human being?
Do we want our government to be an instrument of taking the lives of its citizens? Should our State be in the business of killing?

When we have the capability of separating a person considered dangerous to society, therefore keeping both the individual and the collective safe, should we be wasting money and resources to carry out the Capital Punishment system?

Ending the Death Penalty will ensure we never chance executing an innocent person – which has been proven to be a real risk:
142 persons have been exonerated from death rows in the U.S.A.
We know we have accidentally executed other innocents…

Help restore human dignity and respect of human life by ending the death penalty.

Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty  are saying:

We come to this issue for a variety of reasons:

Some of us believe that small government and the death penalty don’t go together, especially when we compare the high costs of capital punishment to life without possibility of release.

Some of us don’t trust the state to get it right. We already know that some innocent people have been sentenced to death, and for others it may already be too late.

Some of us are disturbed by the roller coaster for family members of murder victims, or wonder why we’re investing so much in a system that doesn’t keep us any safer than the alternatives.

Some of us believe that the death penalty contradicts our values about protecting life.

And for many other reasons…

 “Conservatives have every reason to believe the death penalty system is no different from any politicized, costly, inefficient, bureaucratic, government-run operation, which we conservatives know are rife with injustice. But here the end result is the end of someone’s life. In other words, it’s a government system that kills people.”

Richard Viguerie

We are questioning a system marked by inefficiency, inequity, and inaccuracy.

Learn more here:

http://conservativesconcerned.org/why-were-concerned/

Hold Out for Wildness by Carol Ellis

Hold Out for Wildness

Startled by my smell – I came from behind - the doe reared her white rump

and then raised her weight on her forelegs beneath my birch.

I had suspected her presence since May when deer droppings

had massed in clumps under the split-forked tree.

In September small apples disappeared almost as soon as they fell.

This morning's full sun after a full autumn moon brokered

our first encounter – likely she had lain lazily in the warming rays.

I own no dog or cat to distress her, but hunting season is open:

no orange vest should stray onto my lot, but she bolted after her stretch.

In spring I'll invite her to birth a fawn on my damp leaves.

Two states south a friend feeds a young mouse with oatmeal

she's hoarded from breakfast and stuck two feet from her window.

“She's very brave,” writes my friend, and I respond, “So are you.”

Kerry Lyn lives on death row, and for eighteen years she's measured every move.

She also fed a mouse inside her cell, who died by poison bait set too close to her ears.

Why not feed the young and the wild? Why not hope one creature will survive one more day?

If the mouse bites Kerry, she'll be delighted and then doctored.

If she reduces her own rations as the mouse grows plump, she'll rejoice.

If someone traps the mouse in an outdoor raid, she'll cry herself to sleep

as she has many times before in that six by eight cube that can't contain her heart.

Carol Ellis, 2013

WA State is Near to Scheduling an Execution

Mr. Jonathan Gentry, a Death Row resident in WA State, was turned down on his appeal last Thursday, Jan. 23rd. The process to WA State scheduling an execution date will be as short as a couple of months from now, or perhaps 5 months. We will be working to find out as much as possible and share it asap, but we will also be working to STOP State killings. The government should not be killing. Please communicate with your representatives !


http://nonprofitspokane.podomatic.com/entry/2014-01-25T12_13_24-08_00

Click above and listen to the January 25th interview on KYRS with host Sam Evans, for the show Non Profit Spokane. We discuss Kerry's case and the need to end the Death Penalty.

WA State Death Chamber, Walla Walla.

RACHEL LA CORTE, Associated Press
Posted January 29, 2014 at 3 p.m.

OLYMPIA — Washington state will allow witnesses to executions to see the entire process, including the insertion of intravenous catheters during a lethal injection, state officials told The Associated Press.

The new witness protocol, currently a draft that is in its final stages of approval, includes the use of television monitors to show the inmate entering the death chamber and being strapped down, as well as the insertion of the IVs, which had both previously been shielded from public view. The new technology has already been installed, and officials say the protocol will be finalized within the next week.

Through public disclosure requests, the AP had sought information about any potential changes to execution protocols. State corrections officials spoke with the AP about the new procedures this week. The change is in response to a 2012 federal appeals court ruling that said all parts of an execution must be fully open to public witnesses. That ruling was sparked by a case brought by the AP and other news organizations who challenged Idaho's policy to shield the insertion of IV catheters from public view, in spite of a 2002 ruling from the same court that said every aspect of an execution should be open to witnesses.

"We have been working on this for many, many months," Dan Pacholke, assistant secretary of the prisons division at the state Department of Corrections, said Wednesday.

Pacholke said they have been researching the technology needed to make the change and followed the process currently used by Arizona, which provides an overhead view via TV monitor of the IV insertion during an execution.

"It really does provide greater viewing capacity to the witnesses," he said. "It's going to take an overhead view to provide the view that the court wants."

Under the draft proposal, which is currently under final review within the Department of Corrections, witnesses will watch the inmate enter via monitors from behind a closed curtain to the death chamber, according to Corrections Secretary Bernie Warner. The curtain will be lifted after the inmate is strapped down, and the inmate will be given an opportunity to make a final statement. The curtain will close again, and the insertion of the IVs will be done via TV monitor. The curtain will rise again after the needle has been inserted.

Warner said that while some minor changes could still be made to the draft proposal, the main changes concerning full viewing access for witnesses will not.

The San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals originally ruled in 2002 on witness viewing during an execution, and that ruling applied to the nine Western states in the court's jurisdiction. But until the 2012 ruling, four states initially kept part of subsequent executions away from public view: Arizona, Idaho, Washington and Montana.

The states had argued the policy was necessary to protect the anonymity of the execution team. Open government and journalism groups countered that witnessing all aspects of an execution is the only way to determine if it is being properly carried out. The media also argued there was a First Amendment right to view the entire process.

Arizona and Idaho changed their procedures as a result of the 2012 ruling that same year. Arizona now uses video monitors to show the IV insertion, but Idaho witnesses see the inmate strapped to the table and the insertion of the IVs through a window. According to an execution protocol approved last year in Montana, IVs are still inserted out of view of the witnesses.

Nine men await execution at the Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. No executions have occurred since the 2012 ruling, and none are currently scheduled. But the state Supreme Court just last week rejected a petition for release from death row inmate Jonathan Lee Gentry, sentenced for the murder of a 12-year-old girl in 1988 in Bremerton. Gentry could be the first execution in the state since September 2010, when Cal Coburn Brown died by lethal injection for the 1991 murder of a Seattle-area woman.

"This is the most extreme criminal justice sanction handed out by the courts, and this seriousness is not lost on those of us involved," Pacholke said. "Our objective is to carry out the sanction administered by the court and do so consistent with the most recent court rulings."

Read more: http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2014/jan/29/washington-increase-execution-access/#ixzz2rprxXU00

Wishing Merry Christmas to Kerry Lyn !!!

I could not be with my dear sister this Christmas, (we had the last three together, locked in the small attorney room at CCWF, and it was a privilege to spend the holiday with Kerry!)  Many of us sent her cards and prayers this year. Thank you to all of you who love Kerry Lyn and sent her your good wishes this Christmas, you have helped make her time on Death Row a little cheery and easier to endure. She sends huge thank yous to each of you and sends her blessings upon you & your families.
We all look forward to the day Kerry comes home and can share Christmas and all other days with us!! 

 Kerry Lyn has pen pals (friends) in several other countries, these dear friends sent this e-card : 

http://www.jacquielawson.com/viewcard.asp?code=4543430452230&source=jl999&utm_medium=internal_email&utm_source=pickup&utm_campaign=receivercontent

 Kerry sent us this card

Our family sends our prayers to all the women on the Row at CCWF, we send you our love and will continue the work to restore human dignity to each of you through reform of the justice system and by acknowledging that
every human being is a gift who deserves compassion, 
and working to end the practice of the Death Penalty.
Merry Christmas to you all:
Rosie, Dora, Socorro (special condolences to your family for their recent lose of a family member), Celeste, Cynthia, Kerry Lyn, Susan, Veronica, Maureen, Michelle, Valerie, Tanya, Sandi, Angelina, Brook, Mary, Cathy, Janeen, Catherine, Manling

Here's a beautiful song for all of us :
Diana Ross, We Shall Overcome
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnzmPrsLXn8

Conservatives join the work to end the death penalty

Drew Johnson: Capital punishment inconsistent with conservative views

Drew Johnson…”cited the many exonerations (142 since 1972) from death row as another reason to challenge capital punishment: "Life is too precious to rely on mistake-prone processes like the death penalty." He noted that the Tennessee Comptroller's Office's found capital trials to be 48% more expensive than life-without-parole trials….

"My view of limited government is not giving the state the power to kill American citizens. There is nothing limited about that authority....

t's time that conservative Tennesseans begin to look at the death penalty to consider whether it's consistent with our view of the role of government and decide if retribution and revenge is worth sacrificing our principles, freedoms and liberties."
read complete article by clicking this link:

http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/new-voices-another-conservative-leader-challenges-death-penalty




Info from Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty :

Innocent Lives in the Balance:

The real risk of executing the innocent

Since 1973, over 140 people have been freed from death row after evidence of innocence revealed that they had been wrongfully convicted. That’s almost one person exonerated for every ten who’ve been executed. Wrongful convictions rob innocent people of decades of their lives, waste tax dollars, and re-traumatize the victim’s family, while the people responsible remain unaccountable.

Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in Texas in 2004 for setting fire to his home, killing his three children. Experts now say that the arson theories used in the investigation are scientifically invalid. Willingham may very well have been executed for an accidental fire.

Gary Gauger was sentenced to die in Illinois for the murder of his parents. Police questioned him for 18 hours, depriving him of sleep, food, or drink. They convinced him that he had blacked out and that’s why he didn’t remember killing his parents. He was sentenced to die on the basis of this “confession.” An unrelated investigation later uncovered the people who actually committed the crime, and Gauger was exonerated.

We’ve learned a lot about the death penalty in the last 30 years. We now know that innocent people are sentenced to die. When a life is on the line, one mistake is one too many. Can we afford the risk?

more info:

http://conservativesconcerned.org/why-were-concerned/innocence/

The Death Penalty in 2013: Year End Review from Death Penalty Info Center

click the link below to watch the 2 minute video 
summarizing their report:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6eHXJLBt68

State-by-state data illustrate the decline in death penalty use this year:

• Two states, Texas and Florida, were responsible for the majority (59%) of executions nationwide. Texas had 16 executions and Florida had 7.
• For the sixth year in a row, Texas had less than 10 death sentences, a stark contrast from 1999, when it recorded 48.
• Prominent death penalty states, including South Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana, had no death sentences in 2013.
• California had about 30% of the country’s death sentences, though the state has not carried out an execution in seven years.