Some people really want to pull that trigger.

Representative Rick Brattin (r) [file photo].

A bill, introduced last Thursday by Representative Rick Brattin (r):

FIRST REGULAR SESSION

HOUSE BILL NO. 1347 [pdf]

98TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

INTRODUCED BY REPRESENTATIVE BRATTIN.

2701H.01I D. ADAM CRUMBLISS, Chief Clerk

AN ACT

To repeal section 546.720, RSMo, and to enact in lieu thereof one new section relating to the administration of the death penalty.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the state of Missouri, as follows:

Section A. Section 546.720, RSMo, is repealed and one new section enacted in lieu thereof, to be known as section 546.720, to read as follows:

546.720. 1. The manner of inflicting the punishment of death shall be by firing squad, the administration of lethal gas or by means of the administration of lethal injection. [And for such purpose] The director of the department of corrections is hereby authorized and directed to provide a suitable and efficient room or place, enclosed from public view, within the walls of a correctional facility of the department of corrections, and the necessary appliances for carrying into execution the death penalty by means of the administration of lethal gas or by means of the administration of lethal injection.

2. If the judgment of death is to be carried out by firing squad, the director of the department of corrections shall select a five-person firing squad consisting of licensed peace officers.

3. If the judgment of death is to be carried out by the administration of lethal gas or by means of the administration of lethal injection, the director of the department of corrections shall select an execution team which shall consist of those persons who administer lethal gas or lethal chemicals and those persons, such as medical personnel, who provide direct support for the administration of lethal gas or lethal chemicals. The identities of members of the execution team, as defined in the execution protocol of the department of corrections, shall be kept confidential. Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, any portion of a record that could identify a person as being a current or former member of an execution team shall be privileged and shall not be subject to discovery, subpoena, or other means of legal compulsion for disclosure to any person or entity, the remainder of such record shall not be privileged or closed unless protected from disclosure by law. The section of an execution protocol that directly relates to the administration of lethal gas or lethal chemicals is an open record, the remainder of any execution protocol of the department of corrections is a closed record.

[3.] 4. A person may not, without the approval of the director of the department of corrections, knowingly disclose the identity of a current or former member of an execution team or disclose a record knowing that it could identify a person as being a current or former member of an execution team. Any person whose identity is disclosed in violation of this section shall:

(1) Have a civil cause of action against a person who violates this section;

(2) Be entitled to recover from any such person:

(a) Actual damages; and

(b) Punitive damages on a showing of a willful violation of this section.

[4.] 5. Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, if a member of the execution team is licensed by a board or department, the licensing board or department shall not censure, reprimand, suspend, revoke, or take any other disciplinary action against the person’s license because of his or her participation in a lawful execution. All members of the execution team are entitled to coverage under the state legal expense fund established by section 105.711 for conduct of such execution team member arising out of and performed in connection with his or her official duties on behalf of the state or any agency of the state, provided that moneys in this fund shall not be available for payment of claims under chapter 287.

[emphasis in original, new material in bold, strikethrough emphasis added]

Where would one place such a firing squad? In the public square? Just asking.

Previously:

They took it as a challenge (January 7, 2014)

Rep. Rick Brattin (r): Ready! Fire! Aim! (January 16, 2014)

HB 1524: Could we still have a state ceremonial firing squad? (January 21, 2014)

HB 2082: lethal means (March 5, 2014)

A bill on the death penalty, filed today by Representative Mike Kelley (r):

SECOND REGULAR SESSION

HOUSE BILL NO. 2082

97TH GENERAL ASSEMBLY

INTRODUCED BY REPRESENTATIVES KELLEY (127) (Sponsor), BRATTIN AND HICKS (Co-sponsors).

6312H.02I    D. ADAM CRUMBLISS, Chief Clerk

AN ACT

To repeal section 546.720, RSMo, and to enact in lieu thereof one new section relating to the death penalty.

Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the state of Missouri, as follows:

           Section A. Section 546.720, RSMo, is repealed and one new section enacted in lieu thereof, to be known as section 546.720, to read as follows:

           546.720. 1. The manner of inflicting the punishment of death shall be by the administration of lethal gas [or], by means of the administration of lethal injection, or any other legally recognized method of execution in the United States. [And for such purpose] The director of the department of corrections is hereby authorized and directed to provide a suitable and efficient room or place, enclosed from public view, within the walls of a correctional facility of the department of corrections, and the necessary appliances for carrying into execution the death penalty by means of the administration of lethal gas or by means of the administration of lethal injection. The department of corrections has the authority to determine the manner of inflicting the punishment of death, and it may take into consideration the defendant’s wishes, if any, as to the manner utilized.

           2. If the manner of inflicting the punishment of death is to be carried out by the administration of lethal gas or by means of the administration of lethal injection, the director of the department of corrections shall select an execution team which shall consist of those persons who administer lethal gas or lethal chemicals and those persons, such as medical personnel, who provide direct support for the administration of lethal gas or lethal chemicals. The identities of members of the execution team, as defined in the execution protocol of the department of corrections, shall be kept confidential. Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, any portion of a record that could identify a person as being a current or former member of an execution team shall be privileged and shall not be subject to discovery, subpoena, or other means of legal compulsion for disclosure to any person or entity, the remainder of such record shall not be privileged or closed unless protected from disclosure by law. The section of an execution protocol that directly relates to the administration of lethal gas or lethal chemicals is an open record, the remainder of any execution protocol of the department of corrections is a closed record.

           3. A person may not, without the approval of the director of the department of corrections, knowingly disclose the identity of a current or former member of an execution team or disclose a record knowing that it could identify a person as being a current or former member of an execution team. Any person whose identity is disclosed in violation of this section shall:

           (1) Have a civil cause of action against a person who violates this section;

           (2) Be entitled to recover from any such person:

           (a) Actual damages; and

           (b) Punitive damages on a showing of a willful violation of this section.

           4. Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, if a member of the execution team is licensed by a board or department, the licensing board or department shall not censure, reprimand, suspend, revoke, or take any other disciplinary action against the person’s license because of his or her participation in a lawful execution. All members of the execution team are entitled to coverage under the state legal expense fund established by section 105.711 for conduct of such execution team member arising out of and performed in connection with his or her official duties on behalf of the state or any agency of the state, provided that moneys in this fund shall not be available for payment of claims under chapter 287.

           5. The general assembly of this state finds that the death penalty shall not be considered a cruel and unusual punishment, and that a minimal amount of pain inflicted upon the defendant is acceptable in inflicting the punishment of death.

[emphasis added]

They’re on a roll.

“…or any other legally recognized method of execution in the United States…”

Death Penalty Information Center

Methods of Execution

Lethal Injection

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut*, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland*, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico*, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wyoming, U.S. Military, U.S. Government

Electrocution

Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, [Oklahoma], South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia

Gas Chamber

Arizona, Missouri, [Wyoming]

Hanging

Delaware, New Hampshire, Washington

Firing Squad

[Oklahoma], Utah

Utah no longer offers the firing squad as an option, but would allow it only for inmates who chose this method prior to its elimination .

Oklahoma offers firing squad only if lethal injection and electrocution are found unconstitutional.

(Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Capital Punishment 2011; updated by DPIC)

Previously:

Rep. Rick Brattin (r): Ready! Fire! Aim! (January 16, 2014

They took it as a challenge (January 7, 2014)

Just asking.

A bill, introduced today by Representative Paul Wieland (r):

HB 1524

Repeals the provisions that allow the use of the death penalty in Missouri

Sponsor: Wieland, Paul (112)

Co-Sponsor: Berry, T.J. (038) … et al.

Proposed Effective Date: 8/28/2014

LR Number: 5250L.01I

Last Action: 01/21/2014 – Introduced and Read First Time (H)

Simple. No death penalty, no need for a method of execution. That would certainly cut off the current debate.  

Previously:

Rep. Rick Brattin (r): Ready! Fire! Aim! (January 16, 2014

They took it as a challenge (January 7, 2014))

Representative Jeremy LaFaver (D) on the House floor – January 8, 2014.

A bill, introduced on January 8, 2014, by Representative Jeremy LaFaver (D) (from the bill summary):

HB 1240 [pdf] — DEATH PENALTY

SPONSOR: LaFaver

Currently, the punishment for first degree murder is either life imprisonment without eligibility for parole or death. This bill eliminates the punishment of the death penalty. Any person sentenced to death prior to August 28, 2014, must be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

What’s been going on in a few other states since 2007:

LIFE WITHOUT PAROLE LAWS IN STATES THAT RECENTLY REPEALED THE DEATH PENALTY

Since 2007, 6 states have abolished the death penalty; all utilize sentences of life without parole (LWOP)….

….Notes: New Mexico, Connecticut, and Maryland abolished the death penalty prospectively but still have inmates on death row.

Suggested changes are welcome. Information based on DPIC’s questions to state litigators. (As of September 2013).

A press release from the Attorney General’s office:

July 1, 2013

Attorney General Koster renews request for Missouri Supreme Court to set execution dates for two men on death row –Koster says delay in setting dates threatens state’s ability to administer capital punishment–

Jefferson City, Mo. – Attorney General Chris Koster again today called on the Missouri Supreme Court to set execution dates for Joseph Franklin and Allen Nicklasson, saying further delays threaten the state’s ability to carry out capital punishment.

Last August, the Supreme Court issued an order saying that Koster’s May 2012 request to set execution dates was premature until questions on the use of propofol in executions are settled.  Koster said, however, that waiting until federal litigation is complete may prevent the State from administering capital punishment at all, noting that the Missouri Department of Corrections’ supply of propofol is limited, and much of its remaining supply will expire by next spring.

“For nearly a decade, the mere pendency of federal litigation has been used as an artificial hurdle, unauthorized by law or federal court order, to prevent the State from carrying out the death penalty,” Koster said. “The Court’s current position has allowed successive, limited supplies of propofol to reach their expiration dates. Unless the Court changes its current course, the legislature will soon be compelled to fund statutorily-authorized alternative methods of execution to carry out lawful judgments.”

The State first asked the Court to set an execution date for Joseph Franklin in June 2009, and for Allen Nicklasson in January 2010.

Franklin was convicted in 1997 for shooting and killing Gerald Gordon, who was standing in the parking lot of a St. Louis area synagogue after a bar mitzvah.  Franklin also was convicted of shooting two other men who were in the synagogue parking lot.  While Franklin will be executed for his crimes in Missouri, he also was convicted for the murder of two African-Americans in Utah, the murder of an interracial couple in Wisconsin, and the bombing of a synagogue in Tennessee.  Franklin also has claimed responsibility for the shooting of Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler magazine.

Nicklasson was found guilty in 1996 of first degree murder for the death of “Good Samaritan” Richard Drummond.  Nicklasson was the trigger-man in the 1994 killing of Mr. Drummond, who had offered a ride to Nicklasson, Dennis Skillicorn and Tim DeGraffenreid after their car broke down on Interstate 70.  The State executed Dennis Skillicorn in May 2009 for his role in the crime.

Someone noticed:

Tue Jul 02, 2013 at 12:39 PM PDT

Missouri attorney general demands executions be scheduled before their execution drug expires

If you’re going to execute someone, the least you can do is be frugal about it, right?

[….]

It’s not entirely clear why the attorney general is so keen on using this particular drug for these particular executions.

[….]

“….’The Court’s current position has allowed successive, limited supplies of propofol to reach their expiration dates. Unless the Court changes its current course, the legislature will soon be compelled to fund statutorily-authorized alternative methods of execution to carry out lawful judgments.’

The State first asked the Court to set an execution date for Joseph Franklin in June 2009, and for Allen Nicklasson in January 2010….”

Not so simple.

Yesterday Representative Mike McGhee (r) introduced HB 1520, which repeals the death penalty. You read that right. From the Journal of the House [pdf]:

….HB 1520, introduced by Representatives McGhee, Lasater, Wieland, Berry, Kelly (24), Rizzo, Meadows, Webb, Morgan, McCreery, Atkins, Nasheed, Hughes, Talboy, Spreng, Carter, Quinn, Shively, Hubbard, Jones (63), Swearingen, Pace, Walton Gray, McNeil, McDonald, Carlson, Hodges, Sommer, Hummel, Stream, Brown (50), Ellington, Schupp, Kirkton, Montecillo, Oxford, Taylor, Pierson, Webber, Ellinger, Smith (71), McCann Beatty, McGeoghegan and Lant, relating to repealing the death penalty….

In case you’re curious, that’s an actual bipartisan list of co-sponsors.

The actual bill.

Did you know that even if proof surfaces that a condemned inmate is innocent, the Supreme Court ruled in 1993 that he doesn’t necessarily deserve a new trial? Seriously. I didn’t make that up. And did you know that as of 2003, 115 countries had abolished the death penalty, leaving, among the major countries, China, Iran, and … us, still putting people to death.

Missouri, according to Sister Rose Rita Huelsmann, who spoke at West County Dems last week, ranks fourth in the nation for the number of executions. It’s nice to be near the top of the heap for a change, but if we’re going to be fourth in the nation, why can’t we be fourth in something like spending on education? Or fourth in the number of windmills we’ve put up? Or even fourth in the number of root beers consumed? Why, why, if we’re going to be near the top of a list, does it have to be for the number of lethal injections we dispense?

At least our Supreme Court has some sane people on it. They just postponed, for at least thirty days, the first execution Missouri has had scheduled in more than three years. That’s especially appropriate since the condemned man, Dennis Skillicorn, didn’t kill anyone.

He was half a mile away when one of his buddies killed Richard Drummond, a man who had stopped to give aid to the two of them and another man when the trio had car trouble. The actual shooter, Allen Nicklasson, has sworn from the beginning that Skillicorn had no knowledge that he (Nicklasson) was going to shoot Drummond. But the prosecutor painted Skillicorn as the ringleader.

A Post-Dispatch editorial on Thursday explained several reasons why Skillicorn should not receive the ultimate punishment, and the fact that he didn’t kill anyone was only one of them:

Just as important – and perhaps more so – is that since he’s been in prison, Skillicorn has been an exemplary citizen, a rare moderating influence in a place – as one inmate put it – “full of vampires.”

If the fact Skillicorn had very little to do with the actual murder isn’t enough to convince Gov. Blunt to commute his sentence, perhaps his record as a model prisoner will. The Supreme Court’s action should help him consider that record more completely. Skillicorn’s lawyers had been denied access to prison staff and inmates as part of their efforts to draw up a clemency petition. On Wednesday, the court said this amounted to “obstruction of clemency advocacy.”

Skillicorn’s lawyers now have one month to conduct interviews on a voluntary basis with the people who know Skillicorn best. It’s in the best interest of the Department of Corrections to cooperate.

As Neal Turnbrough, a former guard at the Potosi Correctional Center in Mineral Point, put it: “You’d like to have a whole prison of Dennises; it makes the job easier.”

……..

Among the letters sent to Gov. Blunt on behalf of Skillicorn’s petition for clemency is one from a fellow death row inmate who wrote, “You got a lot of love in you, my brother. And as I sit here knocking on heaven’s door, I will go forth and take with me your strength and honor and total compassion, whether I go forth in this life or the next.”

The letter was written by Marlin Gray, executed by the state of Missouri on Oct. 26, 2005.

Skillicorn is a perfect icon to represent why the death penalty should not be applied. Admittedly, though, not everyone on death row would make such a convincing case against it. Some of them are psychopaths who committed horrible crimes and who might not feel remorse. But the arguments against the death penalty hold water even in the case of heinous murderers.

Just to be pragmatic about it, consider the expense. Why should someone who has already cost another person his life now cost the state of Missouri two million dollars? Because that’s what it ends up costing to try someone on a capital crime. Some counties have been forced into bankruptcy over the expense.

And once he’s convicted, the expense continues because the average stay on death row is 17.5 years, and keeping a man there costs almost three times as much as just keeping him in prison. It costs $34 a day to keep someone in prison and $90 a day to keep someone on death row.

Ah, but worth every penny, some would say, to deter other would-be murderers. We must set an example. If only it worked that way. But no, sadly, most murderers aren’t thinking consequences when they do the deed.

Consider, for example, that 13 states don’t have any death penalty, and that 10 of those 13 states have homicide rates below the national average.  The South, on the other hand, has the highest murder rate–and 80 percent of the executions. Death penalty advocates need to tell those Southern killers to stop messing up their statistical argument in favor of the death penalty.

“Pragmatism be damned,” say some. “I believe in an eye for an eye.” That notion of justice would seem more just if the death penalty weren’t so often a case of a “black” eye for an eye. The death sentence is too often reserved for black men. Missouri currently has 47 men on death row: 25 of them white and 22 of them black. Considering that the black population is about 12 percent, those numbers are skewed, to say the least. Nor can anyone weasel out from under these stark numbers by saying that blacks commit far more murders than whites. A recent study says that there’s a different explanation for the 25 white/22 black phenomenon:

Two of the country’s foremost researchers on race and capital punishment, law professor David Baldus and statistician George Woodworth, along with colleagues in Philadelphia, have conducted a careful analysis of race and the death penalty in Philadelphia which reveals that the odds of receiving a death sentence are nearly four times (3.9) higher if the defendant is black.

The other group overrepresented on death row is poor people. Turns out that 80 percent of those sentenced to death were too poor to afford their own lawyer.

Taking all these arguments against the death penalty into consideration, a group called Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty is urging the state to form a commission to make a three year study of whether the death penalty is effective public policy. MADP suggests a moratorium on executions while the commission studies the subject. Last year, one third of the members of the House co-sponsored a bill to create the commission. The bill did not quite make it, but MADP will push for it again next year. Although a majority of Mssourians support the death penalty, they’re not adamant about it. Sixty percent of them would support a moratorium while the subject is being studied.

Sounds fair to me.