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House rejects attempt to change execution procedure through budget amendment

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Hours before the scheduled execution of convicted inmate Jeffrey Ferguson, the state House has rejected an attempt to change how the Department of Corrections pays for executions.

Representative Jeremy LaFaver (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Representative Jeremy LaFaver (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Department Director George Lombardi testfied to a House Committee in February that all those involved in the execution protocol are paid in cash. That includes the maker of execution drugs, who Lombardi confirmed sells the drugs to a Corrections representative in a face-to-face, cash transaction.

See our earlier story on Lombardi’s testimony to a House committee

An amendment offered by Representative Jeremy LaFaver (D-Kansas City) would have prevented the Corrections Department from expending funds from its budget in cash.

“I believe it’s the only department where we allow multi-thousand dollar cash disbursements with virtually no tracking, no ability to track who procured these funds, who spent these funds, on what they spent them,” says LaFaver. “I think it’s a dangerous path to head down.”

House Republicans argued the amendment would halt the execution process in Missouri, and said there is good reason that cash is used to pay those involved in that process.

“The reason they use cash is for the protection of those involved in an execution,” says the Chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee on Corrections, Marsha Haefner (R-St. Louis). “I think that anyone with any common sense can understand that.”

The amendment was defeated 41-101.

Legislation filed to propose use of firing squad as a method of execution in Missouri

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Legislation has been introduced that would add the use of a firing squad to the methods of execution the state could use in carrying out the death penalty.

The bill offered by Representative Rick Brattin (R-Harrisonville) would have the director of the department of corrections select five law enforcement officers to make up the firing squad if that is the method of execution to be used.

Missouri law currently allows for executions to be carried out by lethal injection or lethal gas. Lethal gas has not been used in Missouri since 1965. 69 people have been executed by lethal injection since 1989.

The legislation is HB 1470.

House Speaker considering legislative investigation of Corrections Department’s handling of executions

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A report by St. Louis Public Radio says the Department of Corrections obtained the drug used in the execution of Joseph Paul Franklin in November from a compounding pharmacy in Oklahoma that is not licensed in Missouri. At least one state lawmaker, Representative Paul Wieland (R-Imperial), believes that could violate state law and merits an investigation by a House legislative committee.

House Speaker TIm Jones (R-Eureka)

House Speaker TIm Jones (R-Eureka)

House Speaker Tim Jones (R-Eureka) tells Missourinet he’s considering calling for such an investigation.

“I think it’s unfortunate that (Governor Jay Nixon’s) administration seems to be so unaccountable to the people and seems to find all sorts of ways to not follow state law but, it’s a responsibility that I take very seriously and it may be necessary to have a committee look into the Department of Corrections Next.”

The House in the last two years has had committees investigate issues including the Department or Revenue’s role in the failed project to build a Mamtek sucralose plant at Moberly and the Revenue Department’s handling of personal information from applicants for driver’s licenses and concealed carry permits.

Investigator recalls incident 30 years ago at Moberly prison (AUDIO)

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An incident 30 years ago today at the Moberly Correctional Center left one guard dead and led to the execution of one of his attackers.

In 1983, Mark Schreiber of Jefferson City was the chief internal affairs officer for the Department of Corrections. He was called on to participate in the investigation of that incident.

Schreiber says the investigation revealed that the inmates had been planning something.

“The intention was to start some type of disturbance on July 4. Well, the inmates involved became intoxicated on July the third, so they were a day early.”

Schreiber says several guards including Tom Jackson, 62, entered Housing Unit 2 to attempt to remove intoxicated inmates.

“The cat calls started and then some pushing and shoving. The next thing you know, the thing escalated, somebody grabbed and held Officer Jackson and the other inmate then stabbed him multiple times … they were fatal. Then all heck broke loose within certain wings of that unit.”

Schreiber credits a small number of staff on duty that day for containing what he calls a “serious incident” that could have turned into a full-blown riot.

“The Captain in charge at the time, who was the highest-ranking person on duty, he basically said, okay, we’re going to get some weapons because we can not get these inmates back into their cells and they were breaking out of the wing into the atrium of the unit.”

Schreiber says shots were fired and some inmates were hit with pellets that ricocheted, but the incident ended.

Three inmates were prosecuted for the murder of officer Jackson. Rodney Carr, one of two inmates that stabbed Jackson, is serving a life sentence without parole in the Potosi Correctional Center. Roy “Hog” Roberts, who held Jackson while he was attacked, was executed in 1999.

Robert Driscoll, originally from California and a self-proclaimed member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, told investigators he had stabbed Jackson. He was sentenced to death twice but eventually convicted of manslaughter after a series of appeals and re-trials on technicalities. He was released from prison in 2004.

Schreiber calls that “frustrating.”

“He was, by his own admission, the individual that killed Officer Tom Jackson.”

Schreiber says there was no doubt that incident could have been worse.

“There’s a real fine line between the term ‘riot’ and that being a serious disturbance … it did not involve the entire prison population … but it certainly involved one of the main housing units and a number of inmates were involved.”

In the days after the Moberly incident, there was concern throughout the prison system that other events might flare up.

“We only had the one maximum security prison, and that was here in Jefferson City, and those people involved in the Moberly incident were sent down to [Missouri State Penitentiary]. There’s always concern that something might occur at another facility, as a sympathy-type event.”

Schreiber says the incident was one of the catalysts for the creation of a new emergency squad, “Corrections Special Tactics and Response,” that could respond when such events arose rather than having the Missouri State Penitentiary Emergency Squad respond as it did in 1983, thus leaving MSP less equipped to deal with an incident within its own walls.

AUDIO:  Interview with Mark Schreiber, 34:22

 

House proposal would take tobacco out of prisons (AUDIO)

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Legislation that would ban smoking in the state’s corrections system has led to some interesting discussion in the House Corrections Committee.

Representative Chris Molendorp

Current state law restricts smoking at correctional facilities to designated areas outside. Representative Chris Molendorp’s (R-Belton) proposal would ban use of tobacco products at correctional facilities beginning July 1, 2013. He says that allows time to engage public health foundations who offer smoking cessation programs.

Molendorp says the budget for medical services for Missouri’s inmate population has jumped by $15 million in the last two fiscal years to a proposed $149 million in the Governor’s fiscal year 2013 budget. How many of those medical needs can be connected to smoking is unclear. Another proposed $376 million would go to health care for correctional officers. Molendorp says all of that approximately $525 million dollars in inmate and employee healthcare comes from general revenue.

Molendorp says 26 other states have come up with plans that have worked. “(They) have an intake process that informs the inmate under our care, custody and control that it will be a tobacco-free environment. Florida went to it. Their penal system is much larger than ours. Cass County does it.”

He says he knows the issue is emotional and controversial. “But at some point, we need to acknowledge that this is a public policy that shouldn’t just be changed for the sake of change but it is a true financial management issue. We have failed to control costs in an area where we can’t identify a factor that will begin to blunt that cost explosion.”

Lobbyist for the Department of Corrections Andy Briscoe told the Committee cigarette sales in prisons generates $5.7 million annually. “Those funds are kept within the Department of Corrections and used to fund various educational programs, spiritual programs and recreational programs at our facilities.”

The Corrections Officers Association testified against the bill. Lobbyist Harry Hill says the idea would make tobacco products a “black market” item. “There will be cigarettes in (the prisons), and then it become a much more precious commodity. There will be more fights, more disruption, more instances where corrections officers are put in peril because they have to break up fights or spend a lot of time searching for the cigarettes.”

University of Missouri School of Medicine researcher Stan Cowen supports the bill and says there is little evidence supporting the argument that stopping smoking will make cigarettes a valuable “black market” item. “When surveyed in 2007, 51 of the U.S. Departments of Corrections reported no violence or riots associated with the transition to stricter tobacco policy.”

Representative Kathie Conway (R-St. Charles) told Molendorp his proposal raises another idea. “Should we maybe extend the non smoking rule to everyone who takes any form of state aid? Because people on Medicaid … we don’t tell them they can’t smoke but yet we are paying for their health care just the same.”

AUDIO: Listen to the Corrections Committee discussion of HB 1136.

Koster seeks execution date for neo-Nazi mass murderer

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Joseph Franklin The attention has suddenly shifted from the execution of Reginald Clemons, 37, who was scheduled to be put to death at 12:01 a.m. tomorrow, to that of an admitted neo-Nazi, 59-year-old Joseph Franklin.

Clemons’ execution was halted earlier this month when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit granted an "indefinite stay of execution" for the Missouri death row inmate accused of participating in the murder of two sisters, Julie and Robin Kerry, at the old Chain of Rocks Bridge in St. Louis. Visit Missourinet’s Death Row Web page for more background on the case.

However, execution news did emerge from Attorney General Chris Koster’s office today as he seeks an execution date for Franklin, a death row inmate convicted of race-related killings in Missouri and other states.

Koster today is asking the Missouri Supreme Court to set an execution date for the 1997 shooting and killing of Gerald Gordon, who was standing in the parking lot of a St. Louis area synagogue after a bar mitzvah. Franklin was also convicted of shooting two other men who were in the synagogue parking lot.

"Joseph Franklin planned out and committed a heinous crime that was borne of pure hatred, and it is time for him to face his punishment," Koster says.

Franklin would be executed for his crimes in Missouri, but he was also found guilty of murdering two African-Americans in Utah, an interracial couple in Wisconsin, and the bombing of a synagogue in Tennessee. Franklin claims to be responsible for shooting Larry Flynt, publisher of Hustler Magazine.

Franklin carefully scouted synagogues in St. Louis before selecting one in Richmond Heights that had bushes nearby where he could hide and fire on the crowd there, Koster says.

Franklin confessed to the 1977 murder in 1994 while serving six consecutive life sentences a tthe U.S. Penitentiary in Marion, Illinois.

"Anti-Semitism and racism were at the heart of Franklin’s crimes," Koster says. "His kind of hatred cannot be tolerated by socieity. It is time for justice to be served."

"He didn’t care who he killed, he just wanted to kill members of the St. Louis Jewish community," Koster tells the Missourinet. "It was a murder that was clearly rooted in religious hatred."

Despite Franklin’s criminal history and the cold-blooded nature of his crimes, opponents of the death penalty are expected to protest his execution just as any other. Koster says that doesn’t sway his resolve that Franklin’s sentence should be carried out.

"The jury has established the verdict in this matter and the pentalty and that penalty was death," Koster says. "Joseph Franklin’s history of criminal conduct has been so extraordinary, so rooted in racial and religious hatred, and so destructive to the lives of so many families that it merits the penalty of death. I agree with that decision and the time has come to move forward."

He is being held at the Missouri prison at Potosi. The Missourinet’s Death Row Web page has more details on Franklin’s St. Louis crimes.

Just last week, James Von Brunn allegedly tried to open fire at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Von Brunn, a white supremicist/activist, grew up in the St. Louis area and attended college at Washington University. The University issued a statement on its stance for celebrating diversity and teaching tolerance.

Franklin has been convicted of the following murders:

Alphonse Manning and Toni Schwenn (Madison, Wis.) – In 1985 Franklin was found guilty of killing interracial couple Alphonse Manning (black) and Toni Schwenn (white), both 23 years old. The couple was reportedly pulling out of a shopping mall when Franklin rammed their car from behind, then got out and shot Manning twice and Schwenn four times, killing both of them. He was sentenced to two life terms.

Bryant Tatum and Nancy Hilton (Chattanooga, Tenn.) - Franklin pleaded guilty to the July 29, 1978 sniper murder of Bryant Tatum (black) and for attempting to murder his white girlfriend, Nancy Hilton. The couple were at a Pizza Hut when Franklin admits to hiding in tall grass near the restaurant and gunning them down. He was sentenced to life.

Donte Brown and Darrel Lane (Cincinnati, Ohio) – Cousins Dante Brown, 13, and Darrel Lane, 14, were walking to a convenience store in 1980, when Franklin, reportedly standing on an overpass, shot two bullets into each child. Lane died at the scene and Brown died a few hours later at the hospital. Franklin was found guilty and sentenced to two life terms.

Ted Fields and David Martin (Salt Lake City, Utah) – Ted Fields, 20, and David Martin, 18, were jogging with two women at Liberty Park. Franklin fired on the group, striking Fields three times and Martin five, killing both. One of the women was injured. He received two life sentences for the crime.

Gerald Gordon (Richmond Heights, Mo.) - On Oct. 8, 1977, Gerald Gordon, Steven Goldman and William Ash walked through a synagogue parking lot. None of them knew Franklin reportedly had a Remington 700 hunting rifle aimed at them. Franklin reportedly fired five shots, killing Gordon and injuring Goldman and Ash. In February, 1997, a jury found him guilty and sentenced to death by lethal injection.

Franklin has also admitted to synagogue bombings as well as other murders and attempted murders, but because it’s believed many of his stories are fabricated, solid evidence is not available.

Chris Koster’s comments on the case

Skillicorn executed early this morning at Bonne Terre

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Murderer Dennis Skillicorn went to his death this morning with an apology and with faith.

In his final statement, Skillicorn said he had lived every day for the last 15 years with remorse for his murder of Richard Drummond, who had stopped to offer a ride to Skillicorn and two others when their car broke down. Skillicorn lost his last appeal to the State Supreme Court just moments before he was taken to the death chamber. He was pronounced dead at 12:34 this morning.

Skillicorn was implicated in five murders, but he said in his last statement that God and a good woman had changed his life. His statement was read by Corrections Department spokesman Jacqueline LaPine.

“The sorrow, despair and regrets of my life would most certainly have consumed me if not for the grace and mercy of a loving and living God who saved me,” Skillicorn wrote in a final statement read to reporters by Department of Corrections’ spokesman Jacqueline LaPine. “As a husband, I’ve been overjoyed to know the love of a woman unlike any I’ve ever known. She shall forever be by soul mate and I hers.”

While in prison, Skillicorn married Paula Barr, a reporter for the Kansas City Star who covered his trial as a crime reporter. She no longer works for the Star. They were married in 1997 at the Potosi prison, where Skillicorn was housed until being moved to Bonne Terre for the execution.

Attorneys for Skillicorn kept up the legal battle until the very end. The State Supreme Court turned aside half-a-dozen appeals for stays of execution in the final day, the last one shortly before midnight. That delayed the execution for about half an hour.

Governor Nixon denied a clemency request earlier in the evening after receiving a final briefing from his counsel.

“After careful deliberation, I have denied this petition,” Nixon said in a written statement. “After more than a decade of legal challenges, both the conviction and the death sentence of Dennis Skillicorn have held up under extensive judicial review by the state and federal courts. “

Nixon noted in his statement that the two murders for which Dennis Skillicorn was convicted in Missouri are not his only murder convictions. He also received life sentences after pleading guilty to murdering an Arizona couple in 1994, a few days after the Drummond murder.

“These factors were taken into consideration in the clemency process and played a significant role in my decision,” Nixon stated.

Supporters of a commutation for Skillicorn noted his many good works while in prison, but it was a decision made on August24th of 1994 that cost Skillicorn his life. Skillicorn, along with Allen Nicklasson and Tim DeGraffenreid had been driving back to Kansas City the day before after a road trip to buy drugs when their car broke down on I-70. They tried to have it repaired, but it broke down again the next day.

Richard Drummond, a 47-year-old supervisor from AT&T, stopped to offer the three a ride, not knowing the three were armed after burglarizing a nearby house. Nicklasson held a 22-caliber pistol to Drummond’s head and ordered him to drive to a secluded area in Lafayette County where Nicklasson took Drummond into the woods and killed him.

Skillicorn and Nicklasson dropped DeGraffenreid off in Blue Springs and kept driving Drummond’s car until it got stuck in the Arizona desert. They walked to a nearby home where Joe Babcock offered to pull them out of the sand. As Babcock was trying to scoop sand from the car’s tires, Nicklasson killed him. They then went back to the house and killed his wife, Charlene, and took the Babcock’s vehicle.

DeGraffenreid by then had been arrested and led police to Drummond’s body. Skillicorn and Nicklasson were caught in the San Diego, California area six weeks after Drummond’s death.

DeGraffenreid pleaded guilty to second degree murder and is in prison for life. Nicklasson and Skillicorn were tried separately. Both got death. Nicklasson is still awaiting execution.

Skillicorn had been involved in an earlier murder. In 1979, he and two other young men burglarized a Kansas City home. One of the others used a shotgun to kill an 81-year-old man. Skillicorn, then 20, was convicted of second-degree murder and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. He was paroled in 1992.

Skillicorn supporters say the man who died was not the same man who was involved in the killings. They pointed to his work caring for sick and dying inmates, or his work in a program helping families of inmates. One person says he has made prison safer. Another has called him a “calming influence” in the prison. He was the editor of COMPASSION magazine which is sent to death row inmates and to about 4,500 other readers. Money from subscriptions has funded scholarships for children who have lost parents to violent crime.

This was Missouri’s first execution since October, 2005, when the state put Marlin Gray to death, the fifth inmate executed that year. In February, 2006, the state came within hours of executing Michael Taylor for the murder of a Kansas City school girl. His case was added the list of others that challenged the three-drug protocol used for executions. Courts have since upheld the system used in Missouri. Taylor remains under a death sentence. No new execution date has been set for him.

Download/listen Bob Priddy reports (:60 MP3)

House debate turns emotional on death penalty study

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Heartfelt, emotional debate precedes approval in the House of studying Missouri’s use of the death penalty, though the body rejects a moratorium on executions.

Talk about the death penalty becomes more urgent with Dennis Skillicorn scheduled to die May 20th and Kenneth Baumruk’s execution scheduled for August 7th. It turns personal when Representative Tim Jones of Eureka recalls learning of the murder of his aunt in early December of 1991. He told a hushed chamber that his mother answered the phone in tears.

“I asked her to tell me it wasn’t true,” Jones said, “She said ‘Tim, I’m sorry, your uncle is OK, he’s with your dad, but Aunt Pam has been murdered.”

His Aunt Pam was the wife of Rep. Kenny Jones (R-California), killed along with three others by James Johnson, who was executed in 2002. That violent night played a large role in the debate on the House floor. Rep. Kenny Jones offered the amendment that authorized a study of how Missouri administers the death penalty, but stripped the language that would have imposed a two-year moratorium on executions.

Rep. Tim Jones read the names of the victims of Johnson’s violent rampage. Along with his aunt, Moniteau County Deputy Les Roark, Cooper County Sheriff Charles Smith and Miller County Deputy Sandra Wilson died. Johnson was executed on January 9th, 2002. Jones said that it wasn’t until that execution, ten years later, that his family got to experience some small piece of justice and some small piece of closure.

Sponsor of the death penalty moratorium bill, Rep. Bill Deeken (R-Jefferson City) said he understands the sentiment surrounding that violent night, but insists that Missouri must make sure it has confidence justice is served when it executes someone.

“Do a study and make sure that in cases where we don’t know as well as we did in California, Missouri that night, that the person is guilty, that we do have a commission that can study this and find out and make sure that we are not putting someone to death that is not guilty,” Deeken said, wrapping up House floor debate.

Missouri has not had an execution since the execution of Marlin Gray on October 26, 2005. Deeken said Missouri is 5th among the states in the number of executions, 66, since 1989. He said that since 1973, 131 men and women under the death sentence have been set freed from prisons in the United States, three from Missouri. The commission would be required to file its findings with the governor, the legislature and the Supreme Court by the beginning of 2012.

 

Download/listen Brent Martin reports (1:20 MP3)
Download/listen Rep. Tim Jones speaks on death penalty (7 min MP3)

Ponzi scheme won’t hurt Missouri prisons

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The $50 billion dollar Ponzi scheme Wall Street’s Bernanrd Madoff is accused of will NOT affect Missouri’s Department of Corrections as it will other states’.

The JEHT Foundation — Justice, Equality, Human dignity and Tolerance — was a big investor with Madoff and will fold at the end of the month. Among the funds lost are millions of dollars earmarked for corrections-related projects in other states.

Click the audio link to hear Angie Morfeld with the Department of Corrections explaining how Missouri prisons dodged the bullet.

morfeld

New prison in Chillicothe welcomes inmates

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The State Department of Corrections has successfully transferred female offenders from the old Chillicothe Correctional Center to a new prison in Chillicothe. The transfer was completed overnight.

Ground was broken for the new facility in October of 2006. The new prison will house up to 1,636 female offenders. That’s more than triple the maximum capacity of the old prison, which could house 525. That older prison was built in 1887.

Chillicothe Correctional Center Warden Jennifer Miller says today’s transfer was completed without incident.