Yesterday we asked people to write President-elect Obama through a form on his new transition website to tell him that he should issue an executive order soon after taking office to establish a moratorium on federal executions and directing the Justice Department to establish new rules to protect innocent people from execution, for instance by having the federal government not seek the death penalty in any prosecutions during his term in office and to use federal money to better fund state-level innocence protection programs.

Now, a coalition of more than 20 organizations and individuals, coordinated by the Constitution Project, have announced the publication of a catalogue of key criminal justice issues and policy recommendations for the next administration and congress. Visit their website here. Their recommendations include steps to reform the federal death penalty. They recommend that Obama “stay all federal executions and place a moratorium on federal capital charges pending an independent study of the death penalty system that examines racial disparities, prejudicial errors, adequacy of legal representation, and other inequities in capital prosecutions.”

They say:

Since 1988, approximately 73% of all approved capital prosecutions have been against defendants of color, and white federal defendants are almost twice as likely as defendants of color to have the death penalty reduced to life sentences through plea bargains. The U.S. Department of Justice’s own study reveals that over 40% of all requests for capital prosecutions came from only 5 of the 94 federal districts. The failure to address this pervasively unequal application of the death penalty sends an unacceptable message that the value of a defendant’s life falls along racial lines.

Press Release: COALITION RELEASES CRIMINAL JUSTICE POLICY ROADMAP

Target:
Governor Rick Perry and The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles

Sponsored by:
His loving family.

As the family of Humberto Garza III we prayerfully ask you to join us in the fight for his life and the fight against the injustice that placed him on Texas Death Row. This injustice is The Texas Law of Parties. We ask that you sign this petition and let the world know of Humberto and what we are fighting for. We need support and it must start now, please join us in fighting for Humberto Garza. We thank you for your prayers and your support. May God bless you all.

Sign the petition here. The Garza family attended the recent 9th Annual March to Stop Executions in Houston and talked about their situation.

Follow this link to tell President-elect Obama that he should issue an executive order soon after taking office to establish a moratorium on federal executions and directing the Justice Department to establish new rules to protect innocent people from execution, for instance by having the federal government not seek the death penalty in any prosecutions during his term in office and to use federal money to better fund state-level innocence protection programs. You can also give him your other ideas on reforming the criminal justice system.

http://change.gov/page/s/ofthepeople

The page linked to above on Obama’s new transition website invites people to “tell us your ideas and help us solve the biggest challenges facing our country.”

“Since the federal government got back into the death penalty business in 1988, attorneys general have authorized 420 prosecutions, according to statistics kept by the Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project: 180 during the 1990s, an average of 18 per year, and 240 since 2000, an average of 40 per year, mostly attributable to the Bush administration. “Of the 420 authorized prosecutions, 162 actually reached trial and sentencing. Juries imposed 105 life sentences and 57 death sentences. Since 2001, the beginning of the Bush administration, there have been 32 federal defendants sentenced to death .” (Marcia Coyle, National Law Journal, April 30, 2007).

Minorities Dominate Federal Death Penalty Prosecutions
Since 1988, the federal government has authorized seeking the death penalty against 382 defendants. Of the 382 approved prosecutions, 278 (73%) were against minority defendants. Of these defendants, 104 have been white, 64 Hispanic, 16 Asian/Indian/Pacific Islander, 3 Arab and 195 African American. Of the 44 inmates currently on federal death row, 26 (59%) are members of a minority group.
(Source: Federal Death Penalty Resource Counsel Project (June 28, 2006)).

More information on the Federal Death Penalty

The Houston Chronicle reports that Elkie Taylor has been executed.

“You ain’t got to worry about nothing,” Elkie Lee Taylor told an aunt and a couple of friends from the death chamber gurney. “I am going home. I hope to see all of y’all one day. Lord have mercy on my soul.”

Then he looked through another death chamber window where relatives of his victims were standing and told them, “Stay strong. It’s bad to see a man get murdered for something he didn’t do. But I am taking it like a man, like a warrior. I am going home to Jesus.”

After telling the warden he was ready and as the lethal drugs began flowing, he said, “Don’t forget to tell my daughter …” and mumbled something that couldn’t be understood. Nine minutes later, at 6:30 p.m. CST, he was pronounced dead.

Taylor, 46, was condemned for killing Otis Flake in 1993. Flake was found dead — sitting up against a bed, his feet and hands bound and hangers twisted around his neck — by a friend after Taylor and an accomplice were spotted earlier walking away from Flake’s home near downtown Fort Worth.

Taylor was the 15th Texas inmate executed this year and the first of six scheduled for lethal injection this month in the nation’s most active capital punishment state.

The execution came after the U.S. Supreme Court and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals turned down last-day appeals.

Elkie Lee Taylor is scheduled to be killed by Texas today, November 6.

He would be the 15th Texas inmate executed this year in Texas and the first of six scheduled for lethal injection this month in the nation’s most active death penalty state.

From the Houston Chronicle:

Taylor, originally from Milwaukee, had been on parole for about three months at the time of the murder that sent him to death row.

Taylor’s lawyers filed appeals challenging the validity of instructions given to jurors at his 1994 trial. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and then the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday rejected the attempt to stop the execution.

Attorney James Rasmussen said Wednesday he was taking the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. He did not file a clemency petition with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Taylor, who declined to speak with reporters in the weeks preceding his scheduled punishment, had been set to die in 2003. However, two days before that execution date, he won a reprieve from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after state prison records showed he may be mentally retarded and ineligible for execution under U.S. Supreme Court guidelines.

The reprieve later was lifted and federal appeals courts upheld lower court rulings that Taylor was not mentally retarded.

“One of the defenses at his trial and then talked about for years now was he’s slow, ain’t too smart, not the sharpest knife in the drawer,” Terri Moore, the former Tarrant County district attorney who prosecuted Taylor, recalled this week. “But Elkie had some pretty good little skills, scheming and conniving skills.”

Authorities contended Taylor and an accomplice took jewelry, cash, a television and other items in the robbery at Otis Flake Flake’s house so they could be sold to buy crack cocaine. Prison records showed they got $16 for the loot.

Taylor admitted to his involvement in a similar slaying of an 87-year-old Fort Worth man seven blocks from Flake’s home and 11 days before his murder. But Taylor, like in Flake’s killing, blamed the murder on a partner.

His accomplice, Darryl Birdow, was sentenced in 1994 to life in prison for Flake’s death. Taylor told police he bound and gagged Flake but insisted Birdow strangled the man.

“He was an animal who preyed on the weakest of people,” Renee Harris Toliver, Flake’s niece, said Tuesday. “The only thing that stopped him was that he got caught.”

Taylor was arrested after steering a stolen 18-wheeler cab for over 150 miles, leading police on a chase from Fort Worth to Waco that ended when a state trooper shot out the truck’s tires. In the chase, he tried to ram police cars and run over two troopers standing on the side of a road.

Two more executions are scheduled for next week.

George Whitaker III, 36, was to die Nov. 12 for the shooting death of Kiki Carrier, the sister of his ex-girlfriend, at her home outside Crosby in Harris County, east of Houston. Two others, including a 5-year-old girl, were wounded in the attack.

Then the following day, Nov. 13, Denard Manns, 42, faced execution for the 1998 fatal shooting of Christine Robson, 26, at her apartment in Killeen. Robson was in the Army and based at nearby Fort Hood.

To send the Governor of Texas an email denouncing this execution, go to:
http://governor.state.tx.us/contact

You can also call and leave him a message:

Telephone numbers for Governor Rick Perry of Texas

* Citizen’s Opinion Hotline [for Texas callers] :
(800) 252-9600
* Information and Referral and Opinion Hotline [for Austin, Texas and out-of-state callers] :
(512) 463-1782
* Office of the Governor Main Switchboard [office hours are 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. CST] :
(512) 463-2000
* Citizen’s Assistance Telecommunications Device
If you are using a telecommunication device for the deaf (TDD),
call 711 to reach Relay Texas

* Office of the Governor Fax:
(512) 463-1849

Mailing Address

Office of the Governor
P.O. Box 12428
Austin, Texas 78711-2428

Huntsville – Corner of 12th Street and Avenue I (in front of the Walls Unit) at 5:00 p.m.

Austin – At the Texas Capitol on the sidewalk on 11th Street facing South down Congress Avenue from 5:30 to 6:30 PM.

Beaumont – Diocese of Beaumont, Diocesan Pastoral Office, 703 Archie St. @ 4:00 p.m. on the day of an execution.

College Station – 6 to 7 PM on execution days, corner of Texas Avenue and University Drive.

Corpus Christi – at 6 PM in front of Incarnate Word Convent at 2910 Alameda Street

Dallas – 5:30 pm, at the SMU Women’s Center, 3116 Fondren Drive

Houston – To learn location or if a stay has been granted before you come out, call Burnham Terrell, 713/921-0948.

Lewisville – St. Philip the Apostle Catholic Church, 1897 W. Main Street. Peace & Justice Ministry conducts Vigils of Witness Against Capital Punishment at 6:00 pm on the day executions are scheduled in Texas.

McKinney – St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Community located at 110 St. Gabriel Way. We gather the last Sunday of the month, following the 11:00 Mass to pray for those men/women scheduled to be executed in the next month and to remember the victims, their families, and all lives touched, including us as a society.

San Antonio (Site 1) – Archdiocese of San Antonio, in the St. Joseph Chapel at the Chancery, 2718 W. Woodlawn Ave. (1 mile east of Bandera Rd.) at 11:30 a.m. on the day of execution. Broadcast on Catholic Television of San Antonio (Time-Warner cable channel 15) at 12:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. on the day of execution.

San Antonio (Site 2) – Main Plaza across from Bexar County Courthouse and San Fernando Cathedral – Noon

Spring – Prayer Vigil at 6 PM on evenings of executions at St Edward Catholic Community, 2601 Spring Stuebner Rd for the murder victim, for family and friends of the murder victim, the prison guards and correctional officers, for the family of the condemn man/woman, for the man/woman to be executed and to an end to the death penalty.