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Title: Slaying of girl, 8, puts focus on problematic death penalty
Source:
SF Gate
URL Source: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article ... cus-on-problematic-7210194.php
Published: Mar 28, 2016
Author: Kate Wilson
Post Date: 2016-03-28 11:38:18 by IbJensen
Keywords: None
Views: 574
Comments: 4
Perp A decision by prosecutors to seek the death penalty in a high-profile Oakland murder case going to trial Monday is focusing renewed attention on capital punishment in a state where no prisoners have been executed in more than a decade. The outcome of the trial of Darnell Williams, 25, who is charged with first-degree murder in the killing of 8-year-old Alaysha Carradine, will be up to an Alameda County jury. Williams, who’s also charged with killing a man during a dice game, faces two special circumstances that make him eligible for the death penalty — committing multiple murders and lying in wait. But if he is convicted and sentenced to death, the likelihood of his undergoing lethal injection is tenuous at best, experts say. Even with the death penalty on hiatus as the state revamps execution protocols found unconstitutional by a federal judge nearly 10 years ago, prosecutors continue to seek capital punishment as a tool against society’s worst offenders. “I’ve been on both sides,” said Darryl Stallworth, a former prosecutor with the Alameda County district attorney’s office, who wasn’t speaking specifically about the Williams case. “Prosecutors believe, like most people, that it should be used as a deterrent and that the person’s death will give the family closure. “But they’re never going to get closure,” continued Stallworth, who now advocates against the death penalty. “Because that person will likely never be executed.” Victims’ emotions Evelyn McGann, leader of the East Bay chapter of Parents of Murdered Children, a victims advocacy group that hosts monthly support meetings, said members of her organization are often craving justice any way they can get it. “I have people who come to my meetings who’ve lost family to cold-blooded murder and that’s all they want, to see this person put on Death Row,” said McGann, whose son, Richard, was slain in 1984. “I wouldn’t hesitate (to impose the death penalty) if it was the man who killed my son.” A gag order has been placed over Williams’ trial, forbidding attorneys from talking to the media and the public about the case. But on paper, it’s clear to see why prosecutors checked all the boxes that prompted them to seek the death penalty. On July 17, 2013, around 11:15 p.m., Williams allegedly went to the Oakland apartment where Alaysha and other children were having a sleepover. Authorities say he was bent on revenge for the slaying of a friend four hours earlier. After ringing the doorbell at the Dimond District apartment, police said, Williams began firing before the door even opened. Within seconds, Alaysha was felled by a barrage of bullets. A 7-year-old playmate, the playmate’s 4-year-old brother and their 63-year-old grandmother were all injured. Authorities suspect Williams was gunning for anyone associated with Antiown York, a man he blamed for killing 26-year-old Jermaine Davis earlier that evening in Berkeley. York’s children and their mother lived at the apartment. Davis’ cousin, Joseph Carroll, was initially accused of helping to plan the Oakland shooting by casing the apartment. Murder charges against Carroll were later dropped, but he still faces counts of conspiring with three other defendants to murder two men he believed had disrespected him and his brother in an unrelated incident. The senselessness of Alaysha’s death rocked the community. Police Chief Sean Whent and then-Mayor Jean Quan were among hundreds of people who attended a memorial service, in which the little girl nicknamed Ladybug was remembered for a sparkling smile and sweet nature. Her mother, Chiquita Carradine, stood before mourners and called Alaysha “my guardian angel.” Another killing Alaysha’s killing didn’t end what Alameda County District Attorney Nancy O’Malley described at the time as Williams’ “complete disregard for human life.” On Sept. 8, 2013, Williams shot and killed a man with whom he was “supposedly friends,” 22-year-old Anthony Medearis, officials said. The slaying happened on the 1400 block of Eighth Street in Berkeley, in an alleged robbery attempt during a dice game. Williams was arrested that day after police found him hiding in a shed, and Carroll was taken into custody in early 2014 after a wide-ranging probe that included Oakland and Berkeley police and state agents. At a preliminary hearing in the case, a witness testified that Williams told her he “didn’t give a f—” about either killing. Williams’ prosecution is the first time the Alameda County District Attorney has sought capital punishment since 2012, when David Mills was sentenced to death for three 2005 murders in East Oakland. California’s Death Row is the largest in the nation, with 743 condemned inmates. But only 13 prisoners have been executed since the death penalty was restored in the state more than 40 years ago, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a research organization with a skeptical but formally neutral position on capital punishment. Corrections officials proposed a new one-drug execution protocol last year in an effort to conform to U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel’s 2006 ruling that the state’s three-drug lethal injection method created “undue and unnecessary risk that an inmate will suffer pain so extreme that it offends the Eighth Amendment.” Fogel concluded that California’s “implementation of lethal injection is broken.” State officials are working on a new death-penalty protocol that would involve using one of four barbiturates and, in theory at least, would conform to the judge’s ruling. But even if the new method is approved, it will likely be years before executions resume. Opponent’s concerns Beyond the problems with the drugs involved, Stallworth said, his experience, including a case in which he sought the death penalty for a murder suspect, ultimately led him to reject capital punishment after he concluded it wasn’t a deterrent and was applied haphazardly. The duration of such trials, which can often last months, means there’s a higher chance of seating juries consisting of people who can afford the time off. The end result, Stallworth contends, is that wealthier and more conservative jurors are picked to enforce the death penalty. Even when a capital sentence is imposed, inmates can spend decades on death row awaiting execution due to the mandatory appeals process, often delaying indefinitely any gratification garnered by a victim’s family. That delay has led McGann, who said she is in favor of the death penalty but admits to being conflicted on the issue, to be careful when she’s talking to loved ones of victims. “When someone takes one of yours, you want nothing more than to take from them,” she said. “But I don’t tell people to expect that, because it just takes forever.” This murderer should have had swift justice and a public execution! These killers are soul-less, brainless zombies. Anyone see any connection between senseless violence and a deteriorating family structure? Many negro children have something in common with their mothers. They never knew who their fathers were. 
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#1. To: IbJensen (#0)
There are numerous problems with the death penalty, arguably making life in prison a better justice.
The problem is that the prisons are bulging and the prison industry has become burgeoning. Another problem is that negro prisoners are easy prey for conversion to Islam. The death penalty administered quickly will slim down the number of inmates.
Another problem is that negro prisoners are easy prey for conversion to Islam. The death penalty administered quickly will slim down the number of inmates. " Let the little girls Dad take care of the POS, or take him out to shark infested waters, and dump him overboard. Quick justice, save a lot of taxpayer money. Si vis pacem, para bellum Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who don't Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God. There are no Carthaginian terrorists. President Obama is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people. --Clint Eastwood "I am concerned for the security of our great nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within." -- General Douglas MacArthur
If they are in for life without parole, doesn't really matter to the rest of the world. There are about 2940 people on death row, and about 2.4 million people in jail in the USA. Even if you killed everyone on death row tomorrow, it would hardly scratch the size of the US prison population. Death row inmates also cost much more to keep in prison as they are separate from the general prison population, which results in them getting preferential treatment, of sorts. Throw in the legal fees and the total cost of keeping someone on death row for 8 years or so is more than the cost of a 60 year term of life in prison. Often, people on death row are exonerated, sometimes after their execution. Either due to mistakes, malicious prosecution, "experts" that were no such things, witnesses that were either extorted into testifying against an innocent person, or some other reason. The "closure" for the victim's family often comes at a very high cost in terms of the many years they are burdened with the saga of the fate of the alleged murderer, whereas life in prison without parole would give a resolution in much less time. State officials tasked with carrying out the executions can be saddled with personal guilt that naturally comes with taking a life. So there are a lot of negatives to the death penalty.
#2. To: Pinguinite (#1)
#3. To: IbJensen (#2)
(Edited)
" The problem is that the prisons are bulging and the prison industry has become burgeoning.
#4. To: IbJensen (#2)
Another problem is that negro prisoners are easy prey for conversion to Islam.
The death penalty administered quickly will slim down the number of inmates.
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