Costs for New California Death Row Soar to $400 Million

A recent audit of the construction costs for a new death row facility at California’s San Quentin prison revealed that estimates have soared over 80% from previous projections.

Ground still has not been broken for the project, but the new death row is likely to require nearly $400 million, instead of the $220 million originally quoted, and it will provide even fewer cells than planned.

As an average of 12 new condemned inmates arrive at San Quentin annually, the new facility will be full only three years after it opens. The lethal injection chamber at San Quentin has already been renovated at a cost of $750,000. The new construction is projected to cost over half a million dollars per cell (more than double the original estimate).

“I think this report is a bombshell,” said Assemblyman Jared Huffman. “They simply want to build a massive monolith to house all our condemned inmates on the most expensive piece of real estate in Northern California.” Assemblyman Juan Arambula called the costs "alarming."

A joint Assembly and Senate committee is still considering the prison agency’s funding request for an additional $136 million to start the construction.

California has the largest death row in the country with approximately 670 inmates.

Source: Death Penalty Information Center

Texas Inmate Says Judge and Prosecutor Had Affair

HOUSTON — Lawyers for a Texas inmate facing execution next week filed court papers on Thursday accusing the judge at his double-murder trial of having an affair with the prosecutor.

The papers, filed in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, argue that the relationship between the judge, Verla Sue Holland, and the man who was district attorney of Collin County, Tom O’Connell, should nullify the conviction of the inmate, Charles Hood, in 1990.

The filing says that Judge Holland had a “personal and direct interest in the outcome of the case” and that “the wall of silence that has long protected Judge Holland must now come down.”

“Under these circumstances,” Gregory Wiercioch, Mr. Hood’s lead lawyer, said in an interview, “Judge Holland had a clear duty to let the parties know about her relationship and to recuse herself, because anybody knowing these facts would be shocked that she presided over this capital murder trial.”

Neither Mr. O’Connell, 66, who has practiced law in Plano after retiring as a prosecutor in 2001, nor Ms. Holland, also 66, responded to phone messages.

The petitions include an affidavit from a former assistant district attorney, Matthew Goeller, who said that the six-year relationship between Judge Holland and Mr. O’Connell was “common knowledge” and that it raised “reasonable doubt on the judge’s capacity to act impartially.”

The relationship was reported by Salon.com in 2005.

Mr. Goeller was past president of the Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Association in Collin County, near Dallas, and a former director of the Collin County Bar Association. He is currently out of the country, Mr. Hood’s other lawyers said.

The relationship between the judge and prosecutor, Mr. Hood’s lawyers said, violated his right to a fair trial under the United States and Texas Constitutions. The Texas Constitution says that the “judiciary must be extremely diligent in avoiding any appearance of impropriety and must hold itself to exacting standards lest it lose its legitimacy and suffer a loss of public confidence.”

Mr. Hood’s lawyers also filed an amendment on Thursday to a reprieve request with Gov. Rick Perry.

Judge Holland was on the Criminal Court of Appeals from 1997 to 2001, not completing her full six-year term. At least seven of the nine current judges who will decide Mr. Hood’s case served with her.

Mr. Hood was convicted in the murders in 1989 of his supervisor, Ronald Williamson, and Mr. Williamson’s girlfriend, Traci L. Wallace. They were found shot to death in Mr. Williamson’s house in Plano.

Shortly after the killings, Mr. Hood was arrested with some belongings of Mr. Williamson. He pleaded not guilty and continues to maintain his innocence.

His execution is scheduled for Tuesday.

Source: The New York Times

IRAN. KURDISH BOY EXECUTED

June 10, 2008: A Kurdish boy, believed to be 16 or 17 years old at the time of execution, was executed in Iran. Mohammad Hassanzadeh was hanged in Sanandaj prison following his conviction for the murder, when aged about 15, of another boy, then aged 10.

A 60-year-old man, Rahim Pashabadi, also convicted of murder, was executed alongside him. Concerning Hassanzadeh’s case, the Kargozaran newspaper said Iran's judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi had advised the local court to "settle the issue through reconciliation".

"None of our efforts to reach an agreement with the victim's family was successful and therefore the sentence was carried out," an unnamed judicial official was quoted as saying. Under Islamic law, a victim's relatives can spare a murderer from execution by accepting blood money.

Source : AI, BBC, 11/06/2008

TEXAS CONDUCTS FIRST EXECUTION SINCE END OF MORATORIUM

June 11, 2008: Texas executed a rapist and murderer, the US state's first execution since a death penalty moratorium ended after the Supreme Court found the lethal injection constitutional.

Karl Chamberlain, 37, was pronounced dead at 6:30 pm, nine minutes after being injected with the deadly dose at the Huntsville prison.

The Supreme Court had agreed to examine the constitutionality of the lethal injection in September 2007, resulting in a seven-month moratorium on executions. Texas, however, conducted one execution the evening of the court's decision.

The top US court ruled in April that the procedure, the most commonly used to end the life of death row inmates, was constitutional, allowing the death penalty to resume.
Georgia was the first state to execute a prisoner following the ruling.

Chamberlain became the 406th inmate to be executed in Texas, which is by far the state that has conducted the most executions since the death penalty was reinstated by the Supreme Court in 1976.

In August 1991, Chamberlain entered his neighbor Felicia Prechtl's apartment and forced her into a bedroom, where he taped the 29-year-old woman's hands and feet before raping her.

He then took her into the bathroom and shot her in the head with a .30 caliber rifle.
While he was questioned by police on the night of the murder, he was only arrested in July 1996. Chamberlain gave investigators a written confession and provided DNA samples that matched samples from the victim's body.

He was sentenced to death for the rape and murder in 1997. (

Source : Afp, 11/06/2008

IRAN HANGS EIGHT CONVICTS

June 11, 2008: Iran hanged eight men for murder or rape, the Fars news agency reported.

The five murderers and three rapists were hanged in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.
Three other men who were scheduled to be executed -- Mohammad Fadaie, Behnoud Shojaie and Davoud Mahdour -- won a one-month reprieve to reach an agreement with the victims' families, it said.

Fadaie and Shojaie were due to go on the gallows for crimes committed before they reached the age of 18 but Iran's judiciary chief Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi ordered a one-month stay of execution for the two.

The hanged men were only identified by their first names:
Kiarash, 32, who was sentenced to death for stabbing to death another man, Nader, in a fight in 2005; Ali Reza, 28, who had beaten up and strangled a man, Ruhollah, in a burglary in the victim's house; Abdolhamid, 34, who had raped a young girl; Ali Akbar was hanged after serving a few years of jail term for the beating to death of a young man in 2005; Mohammad, 27, stabbed to death the 21-year-old Mohammad Hossein in a fight in 2001; The sixth and seven executions were of two cousins both identified as Ali, who together kidnapped and raped a young girl in 2005; Farhad, 31, killed a man in a group fight.

Source : AFP, 11/06/2008

IRAN. MAN HANGED FOR DRUG TRAFFICKING

June 9, 2008: Iran hanged a man convicted of drug trafficking in the northeastern province of North Khorasan, the Jomhouri Eslami newspaper reported. The unidentified man was executed in the prison of Bojnourd city for buying and trafficking four kgs of crystal methamphetamine.

Source : Agence France Presse, 09/06/2008

Virginia: Death Sentence Commuted

The life of a man who killed three people in November 1996 was spared by Gov. Tim Kaine, a day before the scheduled execution, on grounds that the inmate was mentally incompetent to understand his situation. In commuting the death sentence of Percy L. Walton, Governor Kaine said a new sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole “is now the only constitutionally appropriate court of action” in view of Mr. Walton’s continuing mental defectiveness. The defendant had just turned 18 when he shot three of his neighbors to death in Danville.

Source: The New York Times