Arizona has spent $1.5 million on pentobarbital, but will not answer questions about the source of the drugs. Reporting from Capitol Media Services available at Tucson.com.
Documents obtained by the Guardian show three states paying astronomical amounts to skirt – almost certainly illegally – a ban on pharmaceuticals for lethal injections. “The most jaw-dropping outlay has been made by Arizona.”
Read more here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/apr/09/revealed-republican-led-states-secretly-spending-huge-sums-on-execution-drugs
(Phoenix, Arizona, April 7, 2021) As the Arizona Attorney General seeks execution dates for the first time since the botched execution of Joseph Wood in 2014, corrections professionals, religious leaders, and a murder victim’s sister are calling on the state not to restart executions. These stakeholders’ opposition to executions stems from a range of perspectives, including concerns about the trauma inflicted on correctional staff by proximity to executions, the senselessness of killing a prisoner who can be safely housed, ending any potential for redemption or reform, the harm to victims’ family members who wait years or decades for an elusive closure, and the intolerable risk of executing an innocent person.
These concerns are particularly significant given doubts about the reliability of Frank Atwood’s conviction (https://tinyurl.com/7j4792ub) and the fact that Clarence Dixon is a person with severe mental illness (https://tinyurl.com/4yvkr35k), the two prisoners for whom the Attorney General now seeks to obtain execution dates.
In a letter made public today, 21 retired correctional officials, many of whom have first-hand experience overseeing executions, called on Arizona Governor Doug Ducey asking him to stop the state from resuming executions after a seven-year hiatus. The letter states: “The psychological toll of carrying out a death sentence is well-documented. . . . Post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, and even suicide increase among corrections staff following proximity to an execution, even among those who did not participate directly.” These experienced correctional leaders urged Governor Ducey not to put Arizona’s correctional staff at risk by allowing executions to resume.
The letter from 21 former corrections officials is available here: https://tinyurl.com/jw58pd77
A similar concern was voiced by four spiritual advisors who ministered to federal prisoners before and during their executions in 2020 and 2021. They also recently wrote to Governor Ducey asking him to prevent Arizona from restarting executions. “We recognize the deep pain the families of murder victims have suffered, and we wish them peace and healing,” their letter says. “At the same time, we have seen that carrying out executions does not provide that solace, it only perpetuates a cycle of violence and harm.” The spiritual advisors described “the lasting horror of standing in a small chamber while officials methodically prepare to end the life of a human being,” and stressed that this act “ignores the human capacity for remorse and redemption.”
The letter from spiritual advisors to executed federal prisoners is available here: https://tinyurl.com/y5n8uhk6
In a recent Arizona Republic op-ed, Arlis Keller, whose brother was murdered in Arizona in 2009, explained why she asked prosecutors to drop the death penalty from the case against his killer. As the legal case unfolded, Ms. Keller “began researching what happened during and after trials where the death penalty was sought.” She learned “that ‘closure’ is a myth,” and that “for many families, a long-awaited execution does not bring any sense of peace, leaving survivors adrift after years of living in limbo.” And she learned about “the appalling frequency with which innocent people have been convicted and sentenced to death for crimes that they didn’t commit.” She was relieved when the prosecution honored her request to drop the death penalty, leading to a plea agreement with her brother’s murderer.
Ms. Keller’s op-ed is available here: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2021/03/31/death-penalty-stands-way-true-justice-arizona-needs-abolish-executions/7054342002/
In addition to these writers’ concerns, Arizona’s death penalty system is marred by racial bias, geographical disparity, inadequate defense representation, an overbroad capital sentencing statute, prosecutors’ use of junk science, and other problems that render the system arbitrary, unfair, and unreliable. Ten innocent people have been exonerated from Arizona’s death row, making the prospect of a wrongful execution only too real. And despite the fact that its last execution went horribly wrong, Arizona continues to hide its execution procedures behind a shroud of secrecy.
For more information or to speak with an attorney, contact Laura Burstein, moc.bperiuqsnull@nietsruB.aruaL, (202) 669-3411, @LauraBurstein1
The Arizona Attorney General has filed a motion requesting a briefing schedule on its intent to seek a warrant for the execution of Frank Atwood. A statement from Mr. Atwood’s lawyer is below:
ATTORNEY STATEMENT AND CASE BACKGROUND RE: ATTORNEY GENERAL SEEKS EXECUTION DATE FOR FRANK ATWOOD DESPITE GRAVE DOUBTS ABOUT HIS CONVICTION
(April 6, 2021) Today, the Arizona Attorney General took steps to request execution dates from the Arizona Supreme Court, including for Frank Atwood. The State is attempting to begin the execution process for Mr. Atwood, despite open legal issues—including whether he is innocent—that need resolution to ensure any measure of reliability in this conviction and death sentence. Mr. Atwood was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1984 murder of eight-year-old Vicki Lynne Hoskinson. Eyewitnesses reported seeing the child alive hours after the only time Mr. Atwood could have crossed paths with her. Yet the authorities zeroed in on Mr. Atwood, carrying out an investigation riddled with flaws and lacking in concrete evidence connecting him to the victim’s disappearance, let alone her death.
Below is a statement from Joseph Perkovich, an attorney for Mr. Atwood:
“Frank Atwood’s litigation since early 2020 has been frustrated by the COVID-19 pandemic. The State is now attempting to sweep aside the most profound issues that can arise in our legal system, including whether the convicted is actually guilty of the crime and whether death is a morally or legally tenable punishment in the individual’s case. Mr. Atwood needs the opportunity to present these issues before the Arizona Supreme Court entertains setting an execution date.”
– Joseph Perkovich, Attorney for Frank Atwood
– April 6, 2021
BACKGROUND ON FRANK ATWOOD’S CASE
In September 1984, Frank Atwood and a fellow-traveler were passing through Tucson when an eight-year-old girl, Vicki Lynne Hoskinson, disappeared while riding her bicycle.
Hours later, long after Mr. Atwood supposedly committed this crime, multiple witnesses spotted the girl at the Tucson Mall. But a tip put Mr. Atwood in the same neighborhood that afternoon. As soon as police learned of his California convictions for child sex-related offenses, they dropped all other investigations, and he was soon arrested. He answered officers’ questions and consented to a search of his car. No evidence of the victim was found.
Seven months later, some of the girl’s bones were found off the side of Ina Road, an arterial avenue. Long after Mr. Atwood’s trial, it emerged that these remains had been buried before they appeared on the desert floor.
The prosecution’s evidence showed there was nowhere near enough time for Mr. Atwood to have abducted, killed, and buried the victim.
Evidence later emerged that the State manufactured its only physical evidence connecting Mr. Atwood to the child – supposed contact between his car and her bicycle — but the courts have yet to get to the truth of that matter. That evidence has never been subjected to modern scientific testing.
Mr. Atwood, the son of a Holocaust survivor, is now wheelchair-bound and suffering from severe spinal deterioration among other medical problems that would make the process of executing him excruciatingly painful.
For more information, contact Joseph Perkovich, gro.kcalbspillihpnull@hcivokrep.j.
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Lezmond Mitchell is scheduled to be executed on August 26, 2020. This message is from his direct appeal counsel, Michael O’Connor.
Tomorrow, absent some extraordinary intervention, the United States will kill Lezmond Mitchell, the only Native American on the federal death row. The government will carry out that killing in our names. Most Americans will be unaware of Lezmond’s death. Of those who are aware, few will care. I am among those few.Along with Celia Rumann, my wife and partner in all things, I represented Lezmond Mitchell in his direct appeal from his conviction and sentence of death. As a capital defense lawyer, I have no former clients – just clients that I used to represent. I have a continuing duty of loyalty to Lezmond imposed upon me by my profession. I have a continuing love for Lezmond imposed upon me by my humanity. I had not intended to write or say anything about Lezmond’s execution for selfish reasons. Loyalty and love, however, compel me to raise my voice in protest.In the twenty years I spent actively representing clients on death row, I saw up close how structural racism infects and affects our society. We are all infected by the virus of racism, regardless of who we are or how we look. No case made that more clear to me than the capital trial of Lezmond Mitchell. Without getting too specific about the law, tribal governments are given the choice of “opting in” to the federal death penalty – or not. If they choose not to opt in, the death penalty cannot be sought for major crimes occurring between Native Americans on reservation land. The Navajo Nation rejected the death penalty based upon the great value Navajos place on all life. Despite this tribal decision, and against the wishes of the victims’ family and the Arizona U.S. Attorney, Attorney General John Ashcroft ordered that Lezmond be indicted and the death penalty sought in his case.In a federal capital trial, a large number of jurors are summoned to appear. From those summoned, the court first, and then the lawyers with the court, winnow down and select the jury that will try the case. In Lezmond’s case, more than 400 Native Americans (out of a total of approximately 2000 prospective jurors) were summoned for possible service on his trial. More than 99% of those Native Americans summoned were excused or disqualified as unfit for jury service. No other racial group was dismissed at even half that rate. In a Navajo on Navajo crime committed on the Navajo reservation, jurors were excluded if they spoke only Navajo. Before being dismissed for “cause,” Navajo jurors were badgered by the judge with questions such as “You’re Navajo and he’s Navajo. Could you possibly be fair?” (Substitute any other group there and tell me how that sounds.) Navajo jurors were dismissed because they “were traditional” and “valued human life.” Surely, being traditional and valuing human life should not be grounds for exclusion from jury service in a U.S. courtroom. It is if you are Navajo.In our pleadings to the court, we described the death penalty in the U.S. and its application to Lezmond Mitchell as “racist to the core.” Lezmond was prosecuted by white lawyers at the behest of a white Attorney General and a white President intent on extending the death penalty to Indian lands despite tribal sovereignty over that issue. They may or may not have acted out of racial animus. But the effects of structural racism were evident even in a disparate group of actors in Lezmond’s case. His three lawyers (one white, one black and one Hispanic) did not object to the overwhelming majority of Native jurors dismissed by the judge (herself, a Latina). Ultimately, only one Native juror sat on Lezmond’s trial.The system that permitted Lezmond Mitchell to be sentenced to death was built by those who explicitly believed that their white racial identity made them superior to the indigenous tribes. This is no secret. It has been written into our laws and treaties. That system has been maintained and reinforced for more than two hundred years. All people raised in a society built upon these structural lies are affected deeply by those lies – regardless of who we are and how we view ourselves. We internalize these structures as truths and their evil manifestations no longer shock us enough to care. We can overcome these structural lies, but only if we are willing to acknowledge their existence and their malignant nature. Then we have to do all we can to change them.
In State v. Strong, the Arizona Supreme Court ordered that the Direct Appeal should be stayed and the case remanded for an evidentiary hearing on a claim of juror misconduct, where the juror lied in voir dire about her knowledge of the defendant’s prior conviction. 2020-05-26 Order Remanding for Hearing
Judge Winthrop, a Division One judge sitting by designation on the Arizona Supreme Court, dissented from the majority opinion affirming the convictions and death sentence in State v. Bush. Judge Winthrop would hold the death penalty unconstitutional under the Arizona constitution. Read the opinion below.
Earlier today the Arizona Supreme Court issued its opinion in State v. Hulsey. Relying on Lynch v. Arizona, 136 S. Ct. 1818 (2016), the Court found that Mr. Hulsey was unconstitutionally denied an instruction about parole ineligibility. The Court vacated Mr. Hulsey’s death sentence and remanded for a new penalty phase. (Text of the opinion here.)
Mr. Hulsey argued that the trial court erred when it refused to permit the jury to consider that he was ineligible for parole, in violation of Simmons v. South Carolina, 512 U.S. 154 (1994). The Arizona Supreme Court unanimously agreed. At the aggravation phase, the trial court instructed the jury that, if not sentenced to death, Mr. Hulsey would be sentenced to life with eligibility for “release” after 25 years. Defense counsel asked for an instruction about Mr. Hulsey’s ineligibility for parole, but the instruction was denied. The Supreme Court first noted that, under Lynch, the fact that Mr. Hulsey is eligible for “release” does not diminish his right to inform the jury of his parole ineligibility when his future dangerousness was put at issue (¶128). The Court further found that the prosecutor’s elicitation of testimony and argument about Mr. Hulsey’s history of violence was sufficient to put his future dangerousness at issue, even if future dangerousness wasn’t explicitly argued (¶¶129-132). The Court also found that counsel’s request for a Simmons instruction at the aggravation phase was not subsequently waived during the penalty phase (¶¶133-140).
Additionally, the Court found that the State failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the Simmons error was harmless (¶¶141-144). In deciding this, it looked to the weight of the mitigating evidence, the relative weakness of the aggravation, and the long duration of jury’s penalty deliberation. It also held that counsel’s references to parole ineligibility in closing arguments were not sufficient to cure error. Mr. Hulsey’s death sentence was vacated and remanded for a new penalty phase.
After three years of hard work, the No Noose: Musicians United to End the Death Penalty album is finished!
On November 9 at 5:30 p.m., join the Arizona Capital Representation Project at La Cocina for an evening of fun, while listening to the songs from the album and some old favorites. Quinn Jolly the Band, the Gotes, and Natman & the No Noose All Stars will perform live. Every penny from the sale of the album goes to the Project’s mission of providing high quality defense representation.
For more information about the album, or to purchase a CD, visit NoNoose.org
