Hospitals & Asylums    

Facts Regarding the Pending 1,000th Execution HA-29-11-05

I am writing to make corrections to the statements made yesterday.  The press was very hasty and false as the result of the unrecognized spiritual significance of the 999th execution to the state of Ohio.     The real name of the Prisoner was not Mr. Miller, but Mr. Hicks, and he is dead this 29th of November 2005.  The truth could not be found in the State of Ohio and I had to fight for hours with computer hackers to access the Death Penalty Information Center. By the end of November, the U.S. was expected to conduct the 1,000th execution since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, however the Virginia Governor Mark Warner granted Robin Lovitt clemency on Nov. 29 and the fight for life continues into Dec. 2005.  This is a somber milestone in the history of capital punishment, but it comes at a time when the use of the death penalty in this country is sharply declining.  Death sentences, the size of death row, executions, and public support for the death penalty are all lower than they were five years ago.  We must strive to uphold this Moratorium on the Death Penalty HA-28-11-05 and pray there will be no 1,000th prisoner executed on death row.

a. Elias Suriani from North Carolina was the 997th person to be executed. 

b. Eric Nance from Arkansas was the 998th person to be executed. 

c. John Hicks from Ohio was the 999th  person to be executed. 

d. Robin Lovitt of Virginia was granted clemency.

e. Daryl Mack of North Virginia is indefinitely stayed but may require clemency of the Government before Dec. 1. 

f. Kenneth Boyd from North Carolina is scheduled for Dec. 2     

g. Shawn Humphries of South Carolina is scheduled on Dec. 2.

LUCASVILLE, Ohio (Nov. 29) - Ohio carried out the nation's 999th execution since 1977 on Tuesday, putting to death a man who strangled his mother-in-law while high on cocaine and later killed his 5-year-old stepdaughter to cover up the crime. John Hicks, 49, was put to death a day after Eric Nance was executed in Arkansas for killing a teenager by slashing her throat with a box cutter. The 1,000th execution since the death penalty was reinstated is likely to come as soon as Wednesday, when Robin Lovitt is set to die in Virginia for fatally stabbing a man with scissors during a pool hall robbery. Hicks offered a tearful apology for the 1985 murders earlier this month to Ohio Parole Board members, and said he loved both victims - 56-year-old Maxine Armstrong and 5-year-old Brandy Green. He said his cocaine high made him desperate and paranoid.  He repeated his apology before his execution, telling relatives, "I know this may be shallow or hollow words to y'all but it's coming from my heart."  Douglas Hughes, Armstrong's son-in-law, witnessed the execution with his wife and daughter, said Hicks "showed no real remorse. He never once apologized to the family and never asked forgiveness.”  Hicks had traded his VCR for about $50 worth of cocaine, court records show. After taking the drugs, he realized that his wife would wonder where it was, so he decided to steal money from Armstrong and get it back. He found his stepdaughter asleep on the couch at Armstrong's apartment. He woke her and brought her to bed and then strangled Armstrong, leaving with about $300 and some credit cards.  Realizing Brandy could identify him, he returned and attempted to suffocate the 5-year-old with a pillow, then strangle her. She struggled, and Hicks covered her mouth and nose with duct tape. He left Cincinnati, but turned himself in to police. He was executed in the girl's death.  On Monday, Gov. Bob Taft had refused to commute Hicks' sentence from death to life in prison. The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati and the U.S. Supreme Court also turned down last-minute appeals. Hicks was the 19th person executed in Ohio since the state resumed executions in 1999.

A clemency petition filed with Virginia Governor Mark Warner on behalf of Robin Lovitt, who is scheduled to be executed on November 30, has gained the backing of some of the state's most conservative voices. Among those encouraging Warner to commute Lovitt's sentence to life are former Republican Virginia attorney general Mark L. Earley, Rutherford Institute founder John W. Whitehead, and Lovitt's attorney Kenneth Starr, who now serves as dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law. In May 2001, three weeks after Virginia legislators passed a bill ordering that all biological evidence in death penalty cases be sent to the state forensics lab for safekeeping in case future DNA or other testing was needed, the Arlington County Court ordered destruction of evidence in Lovitt's case. The clerk responsible for destroying the evidence claimed ignorance of wrongdoing.  Original DNA testing in Lovitt's case was inconclusive. In his appeal for clemency for Lovitt, Starr noted that DNA testing has greatly improved since the original tests were conducted and that "through no fault of his own," Lovitt cannot take advantage of new DNA technologies. "I think it's morally unfair to this guy when the evidence was by all accounts clearly destroyed contrary to [state law], and it has clearly prejudiced him," said Earley, who supports capital punishment and is president of the Virginia-based Prison Fellowship Ministries. "[The destruction of evidence] just presents a highly prejudicial cloud over the case. [I]f you impose the death penalty in this case, quite frankly, you undermine the credibility of the death penalty." Whitehead added, "The governor's authority to commute death sentences is reserved specifically for situations like this one." Lovitt is scheduled to be the nation's 1000th execution since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976.  Virginia governors have only granted clemency in six death row cases, including four cases that involved questions of possible innocence. Warner has denied each of the 11 clemency petitions that have come before him since he took office in 2002. (Richmond Times-Dispatch, November 22, 2005).  RICHMOND, Va. (Nov. 29) - Virginia's governor on Tuesday spared the life of a convicted killer who would have been the 1,000th person executed in the United States since the Supreme Court allowed capital punishment to resume in 1976. Robin Lovitt's death sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole a little more than 24 hours before he was to be executed by injection Wednesday night for stabbing a man to death with a pair of scissors during a 1998 pool-hall robbery. In granting clemency, Gov. Mark R. Warner noted that evidence from the trial had been improperly destroyed, depriving the defense of the opportunity to subject the material to the latest in DNA testing. "The commonwealth must ensure that every time this ultimate sanction is carried out, it is done fairly," Warner said in a statement. Warner, a Democrat, had never before granted clemency to a death row inmate during his four years in office. During that time, 11 men have been executed. Virginia is one of the most active death-penalty states, having executed 94 people since 1976.

The 1,000th execution is now scheduled for Friday in North Carolina, where Kenneth Lee Boyd is slated to die for killing his estranged wife and her father. The United States of America really need to begin to enforce the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty Adopted and proclaimed by General Assembly resolution 44/128 of 15 December 1989 status of ratifications , declarations and reservations. The States Parties to the present Protocol, Believing that abolition of the death penalty contributes to enhancement of human dignity and progressive development of human rights,  Recalling article 3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted on 10 December 1948, and article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted on 16 December 1966, Noting that article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights refers to abolition of the death penalty in terms that strongly suggest that abolition is desirable, Convinced that all measures of abolition of the death penalty should be considered as progress in the enjoyment of the right to life,

Desirous to undertake hereby an international commitment to abolish the death penalty,

 

Have agreed as follows:

Article 1

1. No one within the jurisdiction of a State Party to the present Protocol shall be executed.

 

2. Each State Party shall take all necessary measures to abolish the death penalty within its jurisdiction.

Article 2

1. In States where executions have not been abolished punishment shall be meted out to public officials who abuse the death penalty

2. The official sentence is one day per execution committed.

3. Officials who do not stop killing may be sentenced for longer periods of time.

Article 3

1. The public must be fully and truthfully informed regarding pending executions with enough time to respond

2. The State shall grant clemency in all of these death penalty cases

Article 4

1. The legislature shall swiftly replace those executives who breech this peace

The 999th execution will not go unpunished.  The Memorandum to Balance the Ohio Budget granted the Ohio Governor impeachment proceeding before the ethics committee HA-12-8-05.  We shall now enforce this law by replacing both him and the Lieutenant Governor for being dissolute in their fulfillment of their duty.  Although the facts regarding the sentenced inmate were false in the 1,000 Execution Freeze HA-29-11-05 and the Moratorium on the Death Penalty HA-29-11-05 the punishment that was determined to be 18 days in jail as the result of conflicting stories regarding the number of people who have been executed.  This sentence shall be split three ways – 6 days for each the Governor, Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General.  The Governor and Lieutenant Governor need to be now replaced by peaceful legislators appointed by the Ethics Committee and Secretary of State.  The Attorney General must also be sentenced to 6 days because he needs to take much better care of Ohio’s 44,000 prisoners and stop leading a coup d’etat.  The General is too dangerous to grant him the office of Governor before he has transferred the corruption of the State Debt Collection Service to the Ohio Treasury where it would be rational with the IRS and made serious progress releasing half of Ohio prisoners to community corrections as not specifically but precisely estimated as $750 million in the best interest of the State of Ohio in the judgment of Alonzo Johnson v. State of Ohio 05- CV- 695 US DC S. Ohio.  Let these three be punished for the 999th execution under Art. 26(1)(e)(n)(d) of the Rules of Court.