As a rule, this page supports the goal of ensuring media access — including camera access — to newsworthy events, a principle that, to some people, might justify televising this execution. We believe, however, that in the extraordinary case of Mr. McVeigh’s execution the public interest will be well served by the presence of 10 media witnesses who will be in the federal prison in Terre Haute along with the family members, although without television cameras. What might be gained by publicly televising this man’s death would be very hard to balance against its ultimate cultural cost.
April 12, 2001
Texas Steps Toward Death Penalty Referendum
By JIM YARDLEY
Expanded CoverageIn Depth: Criminal Justice
Join a Discussion on The Death Penalty
OUSTON, April 11 — In a surprising vote in the state that leads the nation in putting inmates to death, a committee in the Texas Legislature today endorsed a resolution that would allow voters to decide whether to impose a two- year moratorium on executions while an independent commission examined the fairness of the capital punishment system.
The vote by the Senate Criminal Justice Committee comes as legislators are considering a host of death penalty changes, partly in response to the intensive and critical scrutiny of the state’s capital punishment in last year’s presidential campaign of Gov. George W. Bush. Texas was criticized for failing to provide adequate legal counsel for poor defendants, for executing mentally retarded defendants and for a clemency process shrouded in secrecy.
“No Texan wants to be a party to the execution of an innocent man or woman,” Senator Eliot Shapleigh, a Democrat from El Paso who sponsored the bill, said in a statement.
The committee vote is only a first step. The resolution must now pass the Senate, then the House and receive the signature of Gov. Rick Perry.
Mr. Perry’s aide, Gene Acuna, said this afternoon that the governor opposed a moratorium and would not likely sign a bill. Legislators could override the governor with a two-thirds majority vote, Mr. Acuna said.
“The governor believes that the criminal justice system is good, and there are ways to improve it, but a moratorium of the death penalty in Texas is not one of them,” Mr. Acuna said.
Mr. Acuna cited a law recently signed by Mr. Perry allowing criminal defendants and inmates access to DNA testing as an example of the improvements the governor favored.
For years, Texas voters have overwhelmingly supported capital punishment. But recent polls also have revealed that a majority of Texans supported the concept of a moratorium so that the fairness of the system could be examined. Polls also showed that a majority of Texans believe that an innocent person has been executed.
Mr. Shapleigh noted that the committee actually approved two bills today, one to establish the commission to “fix what we now recognize as flaws,” another to call for a moratorium vote. It is not yet certain when the bills will be voted on by the full Senate.
Maurie Levin, a lawyer with Texas Defender Service, a group that represents capital defendants, said the committee vote was startling and seemed to suggest some shifting in attitudes among legislators.
“It’s tremendous,” she said. “It’s a recognition of all the problems in the system that have been exposed over the past year.”
Asked to assess the chances of passing both chambers, Ms. Levin added: “I don’t know. I don’t think we would have ever thought it would get out of committee.”
April 1, 2001
Widow’s Quandary: Death Penalty or U.S. Trial?
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
• France Arrests Foe of Abortion in 1998 Murder (March 30, 2001)
UFFALO, March 31 — Lynne Slepian, the widow of Dr. Barnett A. Slepian, favors execution for the anti-abortion activist accused of murdering her husband, but said a trial in the United States should be the priority.
James C. Kopp, 46, was arrested Thursday in Dinan, France, two and a half years after the shooting of Dr. Slepian while the 52-year-old obstetrician who performed abortions made soup in the kitchen of his Amherst home.
Mr. Kopp awaits extradition in France, a thorny issue because the French have said they will not release him if he faces the death penalty in the United States. Ms. Slepian said she would gladly see the death penalty removed if it sped Mr. Kopp’s return to the United States.
“I’d like to see him dead, but I don’t want him to have the luxury of having a quick, painless death,” she told The Buffalo News in an article published today. “I’d like to see a slow, painful death. Lethal injection is too good for him.”
Ms. Slepian said, “If the choice is between extraditing him and having him face a life sentence without parole, or risking extradition to try him on the death penalty, I’d rather have him back here and face the music.”
“He should be put through a fraction of the anxiety he’s put my kids and me through,” she told the newspaper. “He will never get justice — what he deserves.”
Oct. 23, 1998, the night Dr. Slepian was murdered — the shooting, the sight of the fallen doctor, cut down by a sniper’s bullet, the trip to the hospital, his final breaths — is still a blur to Ms. Slepian. She does not remember many details but said she would never forget the vow she made that night. She said she promised her husband in the emergency room after they pronounced him dead that she would make sure the person who shot him was caught. “And I promised my children he would be caught,” she said. “At least I fulfilled my promise.”
Mr. Kopp faces state and federal charges of murder and violating the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act by using deadly force against a doctor who performs abortions. Both charges carry a penalty of up to life in prison. The federal charge can bring the death penalty. Mr. Kopp is also a suspect in three nonfatal ambushes of doctors in Canada and one in a Rochester suburb.
“Now at least he can’t terrorize any other families,” Ms. Slepian said.
She said that she never lost faith that Mr. Kopp would be captured.
“All the law enforcement agencies the F.B.I., the state police, the U.S. attorney, Amherst police and everyone involved in this process never let up,” she said.
Ms. Slepian said she would attend Mr. Kopp’s trial if he was returned to the country as long as it did not interfere with the rearing of her four sons, who are 10 to 18 years old. She said that she would let them decide if they wanted to attend the trial.
Ms. Slepian talked about how bringing Mr. Kopp to justice might affect her sons. “For the kids, maybe it will help,” she told the newspaper. “But there’s no closure. They still don’t have their father.”
April 1, 2001
State Bar Calls for a Halt to Capital Punishment
By RICHARD P?REZ-PE?A
Expanded Coverage• In Depth: Criminal Justice
• Join a Discussion on The Death Penalty
LBANY, March 31 — The New York State Bar Association called today for a moratorium on capital punishment until concerns about the conviction of innocent people and racial disparities in the use of the death penalty are addressed.
The group’s House of Delegates, meeting here, also endorsed giving judges wide discretion to allow cameras into their courtrooms, a reversal of its previous position that cameras should be allowed only when all sides in a case agree to it.
The call for a death penalty moratorium, approved on an overwhelming voice vote, marks the strongest statement the Bar Association has made on the administration of the penalty. The group has never taken a position on capital punishment.
“Why would we be hesitant to speak out where people’s lives are at stake?” asked Vincent Doyle, chairman of the association’s criminal justice section.
But the debate exposed a deep rift between the majority and a group who feared that support for a moratorium would be widely seen as opposition to execution, and that it defied the association’s long tradition of shying away from sensitive political issues.
“It is nothing more than a disguised referendum on capital punishment, an issue on which, in my view, we should not take a position,” said Steven C. Krane, president-elect of the association.
Supporters of the moratorium defeated attempts to derail it with postponements and a substitute resolution supported by the executive committee.
When Gov. George E. Pataki ran in 1994, reinstatement of the death penalty in New York was a central plank in his platform, and in 1995 he signed it into law. Since then, just six people have been sentenced to die in state courts, partly because the law applies more narrowly than most states’ death penalties, and partly because some district attorneys have been reluctant to use it.
The first execution under the law is not expected for years, after those who have been condemned exhaust their appeals. The state last executed someone in 1963.
“We believe the death penalty is a good law that serves as a real deterrent, and we believe that it is part of the reason for the historic reduction in violent crime across the state,” said Suzanne Morris, a spokeswoman for the governor.
There has been a growing concern in the last few years about the application of the death penalty. The advent of DNA evidence and the work of private investigative groups have led to the exoneration of dozens of people on death rows across the country. The Republican governor of Illinois, George Ryan, has suspended executions in that state, after 13 condemned inmates were proved innocent, and the bar associations of Illinois, Connecticut, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Ohio have called for a moratorium, as has the American Bar Association.
Last year, a team led by James S. Liebman, a Columbia University law professor, found that in two-thirds of cases that resulted in a death sentence, appellate courts found errors by trial judges and prosecutors that were serious enough to reverse either the conviction or the sentence. Supporters of a moratorium have seized on that finding, while opponents say it proves that the system works, because the errors are discovered.
Also last year, the Justice Department issued a report stating that minority defendants were more likely to be sentenced to death, and finding regional disparities in the application of the death penalty.
Previously, the strongest position the state bar association had taken on the matter was a 1994 report saying that a death penalty law ought to contain certain elements. Some were included in the state law, but others were not, including a strict prohibition on executing people with mental disabilities, and allowing evidence of innocence to be introduced on appeal rather than just procedural questions.
In Illinois and other states, the primary criticism of capital convictions has been that the defendants had unskilled, overworked lawyers. New York addressed such concerns by creating the state-funded Capital Defender Office, which assists the defense in all death penalty cases.
On the issue of television and still cameras in the courtroom, the Bar Association was much more narrowly divided, approving the resolution on a 73-to-69 vote.
New York State experimented for years with cameras in court, under a temporary law that expired in 1997. Since then, Mr. Pataki and legislative leaders, while agreeing that cameras should be allowed, have been unable to agree on the details, like when and how to protect the identities of witnesses and jurors.
Lately, the law barring cameras has come under assault from the bench. Last year, the Albany judge presiding over the trial of four New York City police officers in the shooting of Amadou Diallo declared the law unconstitutional and permitted cameras to cover the trial. Neither side appealed that decision.
On Friday, a Sullivan County judge presiding in a capital case made a similar ruling.