Post by Admin on May 20, 2007 18:04:14 GMT -5
Local and national activists fight to kill capital punishment with University of Toledo event
by Rick Claypool
published October 25th 2006
For many, capital punishment is part of a simple equation: you commit murder, and, in certain circumstances, the state punishes you with death. The calculation goes, by denying an American citizen's right to live, you give up your own right to live. Simple. Just. Moral.
But for others the "eye for an eye" approach to crime is ethically unsound and makes no sense. How can it be morally right for the State to kill? Remember, this is not a perfect world where the police, judges, elected officials and government appointees are always right – a world where we can always believe that those in charge farily mete out justice farily and truthfully.
Skeptical about the infallibility of Ohio's justice system? Read on. Barbara Becnel, Siddique Abdullah Hasan, and Attorney Richard Kerger, all speakers for "Witness to an Execution" at the University of Toledo on Sunday, Oct. 29, have something to say about our less-than-perfect world and the American justice system.
And the law won?How a possibly innocent man wound up on death rowWhat happens when the state uses the death penalty not as an instrument of justice, but of vengeance?
According to Youngstown-area Attorney Staughton Lynd, author of "Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising," the State of Ohio has done just that with the case of Siddique Abdullah Hasan, a death row inmate at the Ohio State Penitentiary. The respected prison Imam maintains his innocence in the murder of Corrections Officer Robert Vallandingham, a prison guard killed during the 11-day prison riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in 1993. Nine prisoners were killed during the riot, the lengthiest in American history.
Hasan and four others were singled out as leaders in the prison community and dubbed "The Lucasville Five." Prosecu-tors argued that the riot and killings could not have occurred without the Five's complicity, though none were accused of actually laying a hand on Vallandingham.
Two of the five, Jason Robb and George Skatzes, were white Aryan Brotherhood leaders. The other three were African-Americans: two Sunni Muslims, Hasan and Namir Abdul Mateen (a.k.a. James Were), and Anthony Lavelle, a Black Gangster Disciple leader. Together, they were accused of leading over 100 prisoners to overcome the prison's authority.
Lynd, acting as ACLU of Ohio Cooperating Counsel, filed an amicus brief on Oct. 12 claiming prosecutors convicted the wrong person in Vallandingham's death and solicited perjured testimony in order to convict Hasan. This brief is an addendum to a habeas corpus petition filed by Hasan's current defense attorneys, Larry Komp and Allen Freedman.
Lynd claims prosecuting attorneys convinced Kenneth Law, a prisoner and riot participant, to offer testimony to assist in Hasan's conviction despite Law's earlier story that Lavelle was the murderer. The prosecution considered Lavelle a cooperative member of the Five and also used him as a star witness in the case against Hasan. Testimony against Lavelle was not considered useful. Hasan, the prosecutors charged, was the primary leader and instigator of the riot.
So the brief makes two significant points, says Lynd: "The prosecutors got the wrong guy, and they used perjured testimony to get him."
When prosecutors from Hasan's murder trial were sought for comment, Bill Breyer, a Hamilton County prosecuting attorney and an assistant prosecutor for the case responded. "The case is closed," he said. "What more do you want me to say?"
Sunday, Bloody SundayBy many accounts, the warden of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, Arthur Tate, Jr., pushed Sunni Muslim prisoners to the edge. The Muslims objected to having phenol, an alcoholic substance, injected under their skin as part of a tuberculosis test, as this would violate their religious beliefs.
Though the Muslims proposed alternative testing methods, the prison administration insisted on using the phenol test.
On Easter weekend, most of the experienced prison guards were off duty. The TB test was planned for the following Monday – nobody was told, but Kerger explains that it was easy for the prisoners to figure out, because they were going to be getting boxed lunches. They only got boxed lunches during lockdown – a procedure deemed necessary to force the testing.
The disturbance began in the L-Block on Easter Sunday, April 11, 1993. In Lynd's "Monthly Review" article titled "Overcom-ing Racism," he says prisoners returning from the recreation yard took guards hostage and occupied the block.
At the time, Hasan was serving time for a car-jacking charge out of Cuyahoga County. An honor dorm resident with special privileges, he was less than a year from parole. According to Lynd's article, Hasan sought help from Aryan Brotherhood member George Skatzes, a "physically imposing older convict." Lynd describes Skatzes putting his arm around an African-American's shoulders and saying, "If they come in here, they're going to kill us no matter what color we are."
Eleven days later, nine prisoners and one guard had been killed. Hasan, Skatzes, and three others dubbed the Lucasville Five, had prominent roles in negotiating the truce between inmates and authorities. Attorney Niki Z. Schwartz assisted in these negotiations and would later commend Hasan and the other leaders for having saved lives and prevented the escalation of violence by prisoners.
"They made a significant contribution to the peaceful settlement of the riot and the release of hostages," says Schwartz.
When authorities reentered the prison, they were surprised to find graffiti slogans on the walls reading, "Blacks and whites, whites and blacks, unity," and other messages of racial solidarity.
On a document signed by Warden Tate, The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections agreed to meet a number of the prisoners' demands in the hostage situation, such as discipline without bias, improvement of work opportunities and an agreement for prison personnell to undergo FBI monitoring to ensure civil rights are upheld.
The ODRC document also reads, "There will be no retaliating actions taken toward any inmate or groups of inmates or their property."
Stacking the deckHow could it be possible that the prosecutors not only got the wrong guy, but also sought his death sentence knowing full well that the person standing trial wasn't the one who committed the crime?
Attorney Charles Boss, of Maumee's Boss & Vitou law firm, would know. Boss, along with Toledo Attorney Richard Kerger of Kerger & Asso-ciates, served as Hasan's defense council during the early stages of the Sciota County trial.
"A guard died," says Boss, "and they wanted somebody to hang for it. So they indicted group leaders, whether or not they were directly responsible for the guard's death."
Kerger and Boss took the case after public defenders admitted they didn't have the resources to provide an adequate defense. Not that the new Northwest Ohio-based defense fared much better. The state's prosecuting attorneys were given tremendous research resources and paid monthly at a rate of $60 to $100 per hour. The defense lawyers were paid only $30 per hour, and were to receive this only after the trial's completion.
Boss went broke. "I was in a two-man firm, and I couldn't afford to spend 90 percent of my time on a case I wasn't being paid for.
"Hasan was denied council by denying his council money."
When Boss asked to leave the case for economic reasons, the judge sent Kerger packing along with him. Following a revolving door of defenders and the prosecution and judge's insistence on moving the trial from Sciota County to Franklin County to Hamilton County, Hasan's chances of avoiding conviction were minimized. The move from Franklin to Hamilton, according to Kerger, greatly increased his likelihood of receiving the death penalty, as county judges and prosecutors have a reputation for toughness.
Beyond that, the two lawyers ultimately responsible for defending Hasan at trial undermined the defense by refusing to talk with each other, quarreling, and objecting to one another's actions. At one point, one even wore a wire during his private conversations with Hasan for a television news exposé.
Lynd argues, "Hasan was not responsible. It was Lavelle, who was impatient with the reluctance of other prisoners to kill guards. Fourteen witnesses heard Lavelle plan the killing, recruit a death squad and boast about it afterwards. It's unclear if Hasan was even present at the meeting when the decision to kill a guard was made."
Lavelle, a leader of the prison's Black Gangster Disciples gang, had power and respect to gain from this bold move. Yet, because of his role as a witness for the prosecution, wherein he testified that the group leaders had agreed to convene before killing a guard at a time that fit the prosecution's timetable and allegations as to when Vallandingham had been killed, this line of questioning was not pursued.
Story timeIn the end, Hasan was convicted solely based on the testimony of Kenneth Law, a riot participant alleged to have been Vallandingham's "hands-on" killer. Lynd's brief paints a startling picture of what occurred.
According to the brief, Law's testimony is the only evidence that connects Hasan to Vallandingham's murder. Lynd cites the prosecution's admission to the existence of limited physical evidence: the prosecutors told the jury, "We're not going to bring in fingerprints. We don't have any. We're not going to bring in footprints. We don't have any. We're not going to bring you blood samples. There isn't any that we were able to match."
Law's testimony seemed credible because the jury was told he was the hands-on killer, despite the fact that Law's trial for this offense resulted in a hung jury, with no conviction reached.
The version of the story Law recounted for the jury, according to Lynd's transcript citations, told of a meeting between Hasan and other group leaders. During this meeting, these leaders instructed Law and another inmate to "take care of business," and Vallan-dingham was executed. This is the Ohio State Su-preme Court's version of the story outlined in that court's opinion.
"[Hasan] fits the State's preconceived idea of who did it. It's easy to leap to the conclusion that the Muslim leader started it because of the TB issue," said Kerger.
However, this version of the story fails to account for Law's recant. Lynd's brief quotes Law's testimony in a 2003 affidavit:
After the riot, prosecutors – placed tremendous pressure on me – At one point, I revealed to them that Lavelle had killed Vallandingham. The prosecutor told me that my story would have to change, because Lavelle was a State witness.
... I refuse to cooperate any further. I went to trial for the Vallandingham murder and the jury hung. The prosecutors increased pressure on me, and even my own lawyer pressed me to cooperate and avoid a second trial. They made it clear that I would die for something I had not done unless I said what they wanted me to say. I eventually broke, and gave false testimony.
What's at stake"[Hasan] is not somebody you want living next door, but he's definitely been screwed by the justice system," says Kerger. "A reversal is not going to send him out skipping down the street." Kerger emphasized that the present point of contention is not whether Hasan is to be released from prison, but whether he's to be released from death row.
"We have a Constitution. It was created by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and the founding fathers, and they included the Bill of Rights. That wasn't put in there just to take up space,' Kerger points out.
"People need protection from the state. This is why we have rights. Few things are more devastating than being investigated by the state, with only your family and the Constitution on your side. And innocent people do get convicted.
"We have to treat [Hasan] exactly the same as we would treat a son of a congressman," he concluded.
Perhaps it's difficult for the average American to empathize with Hasan's plight. To assume the credibility of his situation is to believe the American justice system is flawed.
Nevertheless, there's nothing radical about the belief that human judgement is, from time to time, flawed. This alone should be enough to call into question the basis of a penal system that can only rely on human judgement to reach a conclusion as final as the death sentence.
Where in the world is the United States?America has something in common with so-called "Third World" nations — the number of executions our government carries out. Here are some nations who executed the most prisoners in 2005.
China: at least 1,770
Iran: at least 94
Saudi Arabia: at least 86
United States of America: 60
Pakistan: 31
Yemen: 24
Vietnam: 21
Jordan: 11
Mongolia: 8
Singapore: 8
Palestinian Authority: 5
Taiwan: 3
Bangladesh: 3
States with capital punishment on the books and number executed since 1976
Arizona: 22
Colorado: 1
Idaho: 1
Illinois: 12
Kansas: 0
Kentucky: 2
Louisiana: 27
Missouri: 66
Nebraska: 3
Nevada: 12
New Hampshire: 0
New Jersey: 0
New Mexico: 1
New York: 0
Oregon: 2
Pennsylvania: 3
South Dakota: 0
Tennessee: 2
Utah: 6
Virginia: 97
Washington: 4
Wyoming: 1
State by state executions in 2005
Texas: 19
Indiana: 5
Montana: 5
North Carolina: 5
Alabama: 4
Ohio: 4
Oklahoma: 4
Georgia: 3
South Carolina: 3
California: 2
Arkansas: 1
Connecticut: 1
Delaware: 1
Florida: 1
Maryland: 1
Mississippi: 1
States in which capital punishment has been outlawed
Alaska
Hawaii
Iowa
Maine
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
North Dakota
Rhode Island
Vermont
West Virginia
Wisconsin
www.toledocitypaper.com/view_article.php?id=87
by Rick Claypool
published October 25th 2006
For many, capital punishment is part of a simple equation: you commit murder, and, in certain circumstances, the state punishes you with death. The calculation goes, by denying an American citizen's right to live, you give up your own right to live. Simple. Just. Moral.
But for others the "eye for an eye" approach to crime is ethically unsound and makes no sense. How can it be morally right for the State to kill? Remember, this is not a perfect world where the police, judges, elected officials and government appointees are always right – a world where we can always believe that those in charge farily mete out justice farily and truthfully.
Skeptical about the infallibility of Ohio's justice system? Read on. Barbara Becnel, Siddique Abdullah Hasan, and Attorney Richard Kerger, all speakers for "Witness to an Execution" at the University of Toledo on Sunday, Oct. 29, have something to say about our less-than-perfect world and the American justice system.
And the law won?How a possibly innocent man wound up on death rowWhat happens when the state uses the death penalty not as an instrument of justice, but of vengeance?
According to Youngstown-area Attorney Staughton Lynd, author of "Lucasville: The Untold Story of a Prison Uprising," the State of Ohio has done just that with the case of Siddique Abdullah Hasan, a death row inmate at the Ohio State Penitentiary. The respected prison Imam maintains his innocence in the murder of Corrections Officer Robert Vallandingham, a prison guard killed during the 11-day prison riot at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in 1993. Nine prisoners were killed during the riot, the lengthiest in American history.
Hasan and four others were singled out as leaders in the prison community and dubbed "The Lucasville Five." Prosecu-tors argued that the riot and killings could not have occurred without the Five's complicity, though none were accused of actually laying a hand on Vallandingham.
Two of the five, Jason Robb and George Skatzes, were white Aryan Brotherhood leaders. The other three were African-Americans: two Sunni Muslims, Hasan and Namir Abdul Mateen (a.k.a. James Were), and Anthony Lavelle, a Black Gangster Disciple leader. Together, they were accused of leading over 100 prisoners to overcome the prison's authority.
Lynd, acting as ACLU of Ohio Cooperating Counsel, filed an amicus brief on Oct. 12 claiming prosecutors convicted the wrong person in Vallandingham's death and solicited perjured testimony in order to convict Hasan. This brief is an addendum to a habeas corpus petition filed by Hasan's current defense attorneys, Larry Komp and Allen Freedman.
Lynd claims prosecuting attorneys convinced Kenneth Law, a prisoner and riot participant, to offer testimony to assist in Hasan's conviction despite Law's earlier story that Lavelle was the murderer. The prosecution considered Lavelle a cooperative member of the Five and also used him as a star witness in the case against Hasan. Testimony against Lavelle was not considered useful. Hasan, the prosecutors charged, was the primary leader and instigator of the riot.
So the brief makes two significant points, says Lynd: "The prosecutors got the wrong guy, and they used perjured testimony to get him."
When prosecutors from Hasan's murder trial were sought for comment, Bill Breyer, a Hamilton County prosecuting attorney and an assistant prosecutor for the case responded. "The case is closed," he said. "What more do you want me to say?"
Sunday, Bloody SundayBy many accounts, the warden of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, Arthur Tate, Jr., pushed Sunni Muslim prisoners to the edge. The Muslims objected to having phenol, an alcoholic substance, injected under their skin as part of a tuberculosis test, as this would violate their religious beliefs.
Though the Muslims proposed alternative testing methods, the prison administration insisted on using the phenol test.
On Easter weekend, most of the experienced prison guards were off duty. The TB test was planned for the following Monday – nobody was told, but Kerger explains that it was easy for the prisoners to figure out, because they were going to be getting boxed lunches. They only got boxed lunches during lockdown – a procedure deemed necessary to force the testing.
The disturbance began in the L-Block on Easter Sunday, April 11, 1993. In Lynd's "Monthly Review" article titled "Overcom-ing Racism," he says prisoners returning from the recreation yard took guards hostage and occupied the block.
At the time, Hasan was serving time for a car-jacking charge out of Cuyahoga County. An honor dorm resident with special privileges, he was less than a year from parole. According to Lynd's article, Hasan sought help from Aryan Brotherhood member George Skatzes, a "physically imposing older convict." Lynd describes Skatzes putting his arm around an African-American's shoulders and saying, "If they come in here, they're going to kill us no matter what color we are."
Eleven days later, nine prisoners and one guard had been killed. Hasan, Skatzes, and three others dubbed the Lucasville Five, had prominent roles in negotiating the truce between inmates and authorities. Attorney Niki Z. Schwartz assisted in these negotiations and would later commend Hasan and the other leaders for having saved lives and prevented the escalation of violence by prisoners.
"They made a significant contribution to the peaceful settlement of the riot and the release of hostages," says Schwartz.
When authorities reentered the prison, they were surprised to find graffiti slogans on the walls reading, "Blacks and whites, whites and blacks, unity," and other messages of racial solidarity.
On a document signed by Warden Tate, The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections agreed to meet a number of the prisoners' demands in the hostage situation, such as discipline without bias, improvement of work opportunities and an agreement for prison personnell to undergo FBI monitoring to ensure civil rights are upheld.
The ODRC document also reads, "There will be no retaliating actions taken toward any inmate or groups of inmates or their property."
Stacking the deckHow could it be possible that the prosecutors not only got the wrong guy, but also sought his death sentence knowing full well that the person standing trial wasn't the one who committed the crime?
Attorney Charles Boss, of Maumee's Boss & Vitou law firm, would know. Boss, along with Toledo Attorney Richard Kerger of Kerger & Asso-ciates, served as Hasan's defense council during the early stages of the Sciota County trial.
"A guard died," says Boss, "and they wanted somebody to hang for it. So they indicted group leaders, whether or not they were directly responsible for the guard's death."
Kerger and Boss took the case after public defenders admitted they didn't have the resources to provide an adequate defense. Not that the new Northwest Ohio-based defense fared much better. The state's prosecuting attorneys were given tremendous research resources and paid monthly at a rate of $60 to $100 per hour. The defense lawyers were paid only $30 per hour, and were to receive this only after the trial's completion.
Boss went broke. "I was in a two-man firm, and I couldn't afford to spend 90 percent of my time on a case I wasn't being paid for.
"Hasan was denied council by denying his council money."
When Boss asked to leave the case for economic reasons, the judge sent Kerger packing along with him. Following a revolving door of defenders and the prosecution and judge's insistence on moving the trial from Sciota County to Franklin County to Hamilton County, Hasan's chances of avoiding conviction were minimized. The move from Franklin to Hamilton, according to Kerger, greatly increased his likelihood of receiving the death penalty, as county judges and prosecutors have a reputation for toughness.
Beyond that, the two lawyers ultimately responsible for defending Hasan at trial undermined the defense by refusing to talk with each other, quarreling, and objecting to one another's actions. At one point, one even wore a wire during his private conversations with Hasan for a television news exposé.
Lynd argues, "Hasan was not responsible. It was Lavelle, who was impatient with the reluctance of other prisoners to kill guards. Fourteen witnesses heard Lavelle plan the killing, recruit a death squad and boast about it afterwards. It's unclear if Hasan was even present at the meeting when the decision to kill a guard was made."
Lavelle, a leader of the prison's Black Gangster Disciples gang, had power and respect to gain from this bold move. Yet, because of his role as a witness for the prosecution, wherein he testified that the group leaders had agreed to convene before killing a guard at a time that fit the prosecution's timetable and allegations as to when Vallandingham had been killed, this line of questioning was not pursued.
Story timeIn the end, Hasan was convicted solely based on the testimony of Kenneth Law, a riot participant alleged to have been Vallandingham's "hands-on" killer. Lynd's brief paints a startling picture of what occurred.
According to the brief, Law's testimony is the only evidence that connects Hasan to Vallandingham's murder. Lynd cites the prosecution's admission to the existence of limited physical evidence: the prosecutors told the jury, "We're not going to bring in fingerprints. We don't have any. We're not going to bring in footprints. We don't have any. We're not going to bring you blood samples. There isn't any that we were able to match."
Law's testimony seemed credible because the jury was told he was the hands-on killer, despite the fact that Law's trial for this offense resulted in a hung jury, with no conviction reached.
The version of the story Law recounted for the jury, according to Lynd's transcript citations, told of a meeting between Hasan and other group leaders. During this meeting, these leaders instructed Law and another inmate to "take care of business," and Vallan-dingham was executed. This is the Ohio State Su-preme Court's version of the story outlined in that court's opinion.
"[Hasan] fits the State's preconceived idea of who did it. It's easy to leap to the conclusion that the Muslim leader started it because of the TB issue," said Kerger.
However, this version of the story fails to account for Law's recant. Lynd's brief quotes Law's testimony in a 2003 affidavit:
After the riot, prosecutors – placed tremendous pressure on me – At one point, I revealed to them that Lavelle had killed Vallandingham. The prosecutor told me that my story would have to change, because Lavelle was a State witness.
... I refuse to cooperate any further. I went to trial for the Vallandingham murder and the jury hung. The prosecutors increased pressure on me, and even my own lawyer pressed me to cooperate and avoid a second trial. They made it clear that I would die for something I had not done unless I said what they wanted me to say. I eventually broke, and gave false testimony.
What's at stake"[Hasan] is not somebody you want living next door, but he's definitely been screwed by the justice system," says Kerger. "A reversal is not going to send him out skipping down the street." Kerger emphasized that the present point of contention is not whether Hasan is to be released from prison, but whether he's to be released from death row.
"We have a Constitution. It was created by George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and the founding fathers, and they included the Bill of Rights. That wasn't put in there just to take up space,' Kerger points out.
"People need protection from the state. This is why we have rights. Few things are more devastating than being investigated by the state, with only your family and the Constitution on your side. And innocent people do get convicted.
"We have to treat [Hasan] exactly the same as we would treat a son of a congressman," he concluded.
Perhaps it's difficult for the average American to empathize with Hasan's plight. To assume the credibility of his situation is to believe the American justice system is flawed.
Nevertheless, there's nothing radical about the belief that human judgement is, from time to time, flawed. This alone should be enough to call into question the basis of a penal system that can only rely on human judgement to reach a conclusion as final as the death sentence.
Where in the world is the United States?America has something in common with so-called "Third World" nations — the number of executions our government carries out. Here are some nations who executed the most prisoners in 2005.
China: at least 1,770
Iran: at least 94
Saudi Arabia: at least 86
United States of America: 60
Pakistan: 31
Yemen: 24
Vietnam: 21
Jordan: 11
Mongolia: 8
Singapore: 8
Palestinian Authority: 5
Taiwan: 3
Bangladesh: 3
States with capital punishment on the books and number executed since 1976
Arizona: 22
Colorado: 1
Idaho: 1
Illinois: 12
Kansas: 0
Kentucky: 2
Louisiana: 27
Missouri: 66
Nebraska: 3
Nevada: 12
New Hampshire: 0
New Jersey: 0
New Mexico: 1
New York: 0
Oregon: 2
Pennsylvania: 3
South Dakota: 0
Tennessee: 2
Utah: 6
Virginia: 97
Washington: 4
Wyoming: 1
State by state executions in 2005
Texas: 19
Indiana: 5
Montana: 5
North Carolina: 5
Alabama: 4
Ohio: 4
Oklahoma: 4
Georgia: 3
South Carolina: 3
California: 2
Arkansas: 1
Connecticut: 1
Delaware: 1
Florida: 1
Maryland: 1
Mississippi: 1
States in which capital punishment has been outlawed
Alaska
Hawaii
Iowa
Maine
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
North Dakota
Rhode Island
Vermont
West Virginia
Wisconsin
www.toledocitypaper.com/view_article.php?id=87