Death Row // Current

Ohio halts executions: Will death penalty end?

FROM THE BLOG:
After a failed execution attempt in September, Ohio is reconsidering its execution procedures. While the state figures things out, its governor Ted Strickland, has issued reprieves for inmates facing impending executions.

The inmate in the failed September attempt, Romell Broom, was convicted in the abduction, rape and murder of a 14 year old girl, though he maintains his innocence. A court has blocked any further attempts to execute him until further notice. His experience is described in the Guardian:

"Three guards stood around him as two nurses tried to insert needles into his arms. "The female nurse tried three separate times to access veins in the middle of my left arm. The male nurse tried three separate times to access veins ... in the middle of my right arm," Broom said in the affidavit. The nurses worked for 30 minutes without success and then took a break. "After the break, the female nurse tried twice to access veins in my left arm. She must have hit a muscle because the pain made me scream out loud," Broom said. "The first time the male nurse successfully accessed a vein in my right arm. He attempted to insert the IV, but he lost it and blood started to run down my arm."

Eventually the female nurse decided she could not go on and walked out of the room. A second break was called.

When the attempt to execute him resumed Broom said he was in such pain: "I tried to assist them by helping to tie my own arm." The male nurse massaged Broom's left arm and laid hot towels across it in an attempt to make a vein stand out, but it proved futile and a third break was called.

"At that point I became very upset. I began to cry because I was in pain and my arms were swelling," said Broom. "I requested that they stop the process and I requested to speak with my attorney."

But the attempt to kill him did not stop. A third nurse entered the room and hunted for a vein in Broom's right ankle. The needle hit the bone and he screamed.

After two hours the prison director, Terry Collins, contacted Strickland who called off the execution."

Death penalty opponents are hopeful that Ohio's reconsideration of their execution procedures may turn into a reconsideration of whether or not to execute at all.

What do you think? Does the Broom case make a good point against the death penalty, or is this just an aberration?FROM THE BLOG: After a failed execution attempt in September, Ohio is reconsidering... more

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Bush approves execution of soldier on death row

President Bush on Monday approved the execution of an Army private, the first time in over a half-century that a president has affirmed a death sentence for a member of the U.S. military.

With his signature from the Oval Office, Bush said yes to the military's request to execute Ronald A. Gray, the White House confirmed. Gray had had been convicted in connection with a spree of four murders and eight rapes in the Fayetteville, N.C., area over eight months in the late 1980s while stationed at Fort Bragg.

"While approving a sentence of death for a member of our armed services is a serious and difficult decision for a commander in chief, the president believes the facts of this case leave no doubt that the sentence is just and warranted," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.

In the military courts, "Private Gray was convicted of committing brutal crimes, including two murders, an attempted murder and three rapes. The victims included a civilian and two members of the Army. ... The president's thoughts and prayers are with the victims of these heinous crimes and their families and all others affected."

Unlike in the civilian courts, a member of the U.S. armed forces cannot be executed until the president approves the death sentence. Gray has been on death row at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., since April 1988.

Members of the U.S. military have been executed throughout history, but just 10 have been executed by presidential approval since 1951 when the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the military's modern-day legal system, was enacted into law.

President Kennedy was the last president to stare down this life-or-death decision. On Feb. 12, 1962, Kennedy commuted the death sentence of Jimmie Henderson, a Navy seaman, to confinement for life.

President Eisenhower was the last president to approve a military execution. In 1957, he approved the execution of John Bennett, an Army private convicted of raping and attempting to kill an 11-year-old Austrian girl. He was hanged in 1961.

The death penalty was outlawed between 1972 and 1984, when President Reagan reinstated it.

Gray was held responsible for the crimes committed between April 1986 and January 1987 in both the civilian and military justice systems.

In civilian courts in North Carolina, Gray pleaded guilty to two murders and five rapes and was sentenced to three consecutive and five concurrent life terms.
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Death Row Records auctioned for $24 million

Death Row Records, the hip-hop label that released seminal gangster rap albums by Tupac Shakur, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, has been auctioned for $24 million.

The New York-based Global Music Group Inc. said in a statement to The Associated Press on Monday that on June 24 it purchased Death Row, including its enviable back catalog and current artist contracts.

The purchase concluded the roller-coaster saga of one of hip-hop's most famous labels. Under owner Marion "Suge" Knight, Death Row sold tens of millions of albums in the heyday of early `90s rap — its artists often flashing the spoils of the high life in music videos — before collapsing in debt and mismanagement.

A former couple, Lydia and Michael Harris, claimed they helped found the label, and won a judgment of $107 million, which they tried to collect in 2006. Unable to pay, Death Row and Knight filed for bankruptcy in April 2006, claiming debts of more than $100 million.
In 2006, a federal judge ordered a bankruptcy trustee takeover of Death Row Records, saying the label had undergone gross mismanagement. Knight's decision to file for bankruptcy protection staved off a move by the court to appoint someone to take control of the record label and his assets.

Global Music Group, an independent label, takes ownership of albums including Dr. Dre's "The Chronic," Shakur's "All Eyez on Me" and Snoop Dogg's "Doggystyle."

Other assets are believed to include unreleased material from Shakur that could result in another posthumous release from the rapper.

Knight has a history of legal problems. He was convicted of assault in 1992 and placed on probation, then jailed for five years in 1996 for violating that probation.

He was returned to jail in 2003 for again violating parole, this time by punching a parking attendant at a Hollywood nightclub. He was released the next year.

In 2006 under questioning from his creditors, Knight denied having money tucked away in foreign countries. His bank account then contained just $11.

Global Music CEO Anthony Davi, Jr., said the label planned to get "the best economic results of the catalog and provide long term stewardship of the artists' work." The company plans to later announce details of its plans for Death Row.
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