The Montgomery Advertiser from Montgomery, Alabama • 15

Section Ml UN THE ALABAMA JOURNAL AND ADVERTISERSUNDAY, APRIL 29, 1984 Book reviews Editorials Analysis Letters TAro BESSIE FORD Lethal injection increasingly popular means of carrying out death sentences Opposition to two-tag bill takes unique twist The Legislature did not flinch when it increased the cost of automobile and pickup truck license plates by 10, but a maverick senator caused a stir before the $29 million revenue bill passed. Lowell Barron, an independent from Fyffe in northeast Alabama, said a major company treated him and seven other lawmakers to a junket to convince them that Alabama needs to require vehicles to display front license plates in addition to the rear tags. 'Thought they had brainwashed us' Barron, the only man in modern times to pull off a write-in victory for a legislative seat, said the Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing which sells reflective paint used on car tags, "thought they had brainwashed us." He said the strategy did not work in his case. The bill that went to Gov. ui I 1 Ll id not nave tne two'ta8 feature although Taylor Hardin, a longtime I Wallace ally, is on retainer for 3-M I I and Bobby Bowick, who was on 1 Wallace's staff in a previous ad- lllliliaiiituuii, is uic icgiuiuu o-iu Barron representative.

Barron said 3-M "let us do a lot of nice things" on the four-day trip to the company's headquarters in St. Paul, in early 1983. But, he said the trip was not worth the estimated $3 million in revenue the state would lose if it required motorists to display front tags for the extra $10 charge. If Alabama thought it owed 3-M anything, Barron said, it would be cheaper to just make a $1 million donation. "I know this is going to keep me from taking any more trips," Barron said.

"I know I've blown any future 3-M trips." Barron's attack surprising Barron's attack on the company that operates three plants in north Alabama was surprising because By VIRGINIA MARTIN Journal Staff Writer Since 1977, nine states have spurned the electric chair, gas chamber or firing squad and adopted lethal injection as their means of capital punishment. Over the same period, four other states have decided to give doomed inmates a choice between lethal injection and one of the more traditional methods of execution. Proponents of lethal injection like state Sen. Jim Smith of Huntsville claim it is more "humane" and "civilized" than electrocution or the gas chamber. An inmate to be executed by injection is strapped onto a hospital stretcher and given intravenously a combination of three drugs in a lethal dose.

Smith introduced a bill in the Alabama Legislature last year to change the method of execution from electrocution to lethal injection. The bill did not reach the floor of either house for debate, but Smith is considering bringing it up in future sessions. IN THE WORST cases of electrocution, the blood vessels, lungs and intestines explode; the eyeballs are blown from their sockets, and brain tissue is forced through the nostrils and ears, Smith said. "Regardless of what this man did, do you really want to have the death of this man in such a gruesome method on your conscience?" he asks proponents of electrocution. Smith contends lethal injection "is just as effective, but more humane." But some disagree with him.

Alabama Prison Commissioner Freddie Smith says that electrocuting an inmate sentenced to death is more humane because it is quicker than lethal injection, the gas chamber, hanging or the firing squad. He quotes physicians who have testified in court hearings that a person's brain dies instantly when 1,900 volts of electricity are passed through his body. The person in the chair does not even realize when the jolt hits him, the prison commissioner says. WHILE ACCEPTING the word of physicians, Jim Smith said he cannot help but wonder whether the inmate feels the initial pain. Mary Weidler, an opponent of capital punishment and executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Montgomery office, said she opposes changing to lethal injection because it is too easy for the public to accept.

Using lethal injection is just an attempt to make killing people more palatable to the public," Ms. Weidler said. When lethal injection is administered, a person slowly goes to sleep and then dies. The public should not be lulled into accepting executions just because the method does not offend sensibilities, she said. Cathy Ansheles, of the prisoners' rights group Prison Project, agreed that the movement toward lethal injection is just a way to ease the consciences of citizens.

Ansheles and many other opponents of capital punishment characterize it as state-sanctioned murder and contend that no method is any better than the next. ATTORNEY GENERAL Charles Grad-dick counters that execution is "society's form of self-defense." He said electrocution is the most humane method and not torture as some contend. f- 7. seldom, if ever, do the recipients of freebies bite the hand that feeds them and certainly not in public. Sen.

Chip Bailey, D-Dothan, who was not invited on the trip, told Barron that it took courage for a legislator to turn down "gifts and graft." Bailey added that it took more courage to accept handouts and embarrass the giver. The other legislators on the junket that the Ethics Commission approved in advance were Sens. 1 i John Teague, D-Childersburg, Bailey Crum Foshee, D-Andalusia, and Charles Bishop, D-Jasper, and Reps. Tom Coburn, D-Tuscumbia, Roy Johnson, D-Tuscaloosa, and Jimmy Holley of Elba. The eighth one was former Rep.

John Casey of Heflin, now a lobbyist who lost a Senate race last year. Barron was a last minute substitute for Sen. in ton Mitchem, D-Albertville, who could not go. Sources said Barron was invited only because he knew Mitchem had to decline and he was available. Of owing by Bit Wodi Drawing shows three common methods of execution hospital bed it used for lethal injections, bottom left, a gas chamber, right, an electric chair others from state on trip row in the 38 states with capital punishment laws.

Five methods of execution are used: lethal injection, electrocution, hanging, firing squad and gas chamber. Texas and Oklahoma both switched from electrocution to lethal injection in 1977. Seven other states have followed suit in the ensuing seven years. They are Arkansas, Illinois, Nevada, The state's purpose is not to make criminals suffer unnecessarily, Graddick said. It is to carry out the wishes of the courts.

If the objective were to make criminals suffer, Graddick said, state officials would treat them as they treated their victims. "That's suffering," he said. More than 1,300 inmates are on death New Jersey. New Mexico, South Dakota and Massachusetts Four other states Montana. North Carolina.

Utah and Washington added lethal injection as an alternative. IN MONTANA and Washington, inmates have a choice between lethal injec- See LETHAL, page 6B Some 11 other Alabamians also were on the trip, including state Revenue Commissioner James White, House Clerk John Pemberton. Jim Sumner. Lt. Gov.

iL' j. tj CI, -ivt Bill Baxley's chief assistant; Louis I Greene, director of the Legislative I Reference Service; Bobby Tim- mons' director of the Alabama Sheriff's Association: and Mont Lengthy appeals process trying for inmates, families of victims gomery County Probate Judge Walker Hobbie. Coburn, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, sponsored the two-tag bill that would have raised the tag cost by $4. The House dumped the two-tag feature Coburn and turned the bill into a full-fledged revenue measure that increased the car and pickup truck tags to $10 and boosted the motorcycle tags by $8. Teague had the two-tag provision restored in a Senate committee, but he did not defend it on the Senate floor after Barron linked the 3-M trip to the bill.

Coburn said the 3-M junket did not influence him to sponsor the two-tag bill that the company wanted. He said he handled the bill at the request of law enforcement officers who said the front tag display would help them catch criminals. "If I'm going to be bought," he said, "it's going to be more than a trip. It would have no more effect than somebody buying me dinner. Any senator or House member, if they are that damn weak to be influenced by a trip, I don't know how strong they would be in office." Coburn closely aligned with labor Coburn, who is closely aligned with labor, said 3-M is a "blue chip industry" that Alabama needs to cultivate, nnA Ka aai4 ttiA trin 03VP the Usually the inmate tries to show that an error was made in his trial or sentencing, according to Carroll.

If those courts do not overturn the conviction, the convicted person can again appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. But the expense of appealing after the Alabama Supreme Court decision is left to the individual. Carroll said. The length of the process can be affected by many factors, Carroll said, including crowding on court dockets.

But in some cases, the appeal process is not as long. A convicted criminal may choose not to appeal his case past the automatic appeal process, or he may not have enough money to hire a lawyer. MOST LAWYERS handling appeals of death sentences are private attorneys working for free or for little compensation. Carroll said. Many death row inmates are poor and cannot afford legal counsel.

Carroll said many times when federal courts review cases, they find an error by the lawyer who represented the inmate during his trial or by the trial court. Those errors could result in a new trial or sentencing hearing, further lengthening the process. The case of William "Chick" Bush is a recent example of a federal court's sending a case back to Circuit Court for rehearing. Bush was convicted in 1981 of capital murder in the shooting death of Larry Dominguez, a clerk at a convenience store in Montgomery. Bush came within 12 hours of dying in the electric chair in December, but U.S.

District Judge Robert Varner staved his execution. By VIRGINIA MARTIN Journal Staff Writer Seventy-one people now occupy Alabama's death row, but state officials are not sure when any of them will be executed. None of the condemned has been assigned an execution date. But even if the dates were set, the appeal procedure probably would delay electrocution, said Department of Corrections spokesman John Hale. Appeals available to inmates sentenced to the electric chair can stretch their stay on death row to five years or more, according to John Carroll of the Southern Poverty Law Center.

He said the appeals, by providing numerous checks of lower court decisions, help to insure that innocent people do not die in the electric chair. But the stay on death row can be trying to an inmate as well, he said. THE INMATES live, eat and sleep in cells that are 40 square feet. They are allowed in the recreational area for just 30 minutes each day and they are isolated from the rest of the prison population. Isolation, crowding and waiting for the encounter with "Yellow the name given to Alabama's electric chair, can result in psychological trauma, including depression and anxiety for the inmates, Carroll said.

Lengthy appeals not only affect the psychological well-being of inmates, but families of victims as well. Dale Thompson, whose son was shot to death outside the Skatehaven skating rink in Montgomery, called families of victims in capital-murder cases "victims of the criminal-justice system." Thompson said he has relived his teen-age son's 1978 murder through two trials of Jerome Vincent Berard and through numerous appeal hearings. BERARD WAS found guilty of capital murder in the double-slaying, but the case was sent back to trial because of a procedural error. He was convicted and sentenced to death after both trials. Thompson said he holds his breath each time the case is appealed, afraid that a court will order another trial.

The case is now before the state Supreme Court. Thompson said. Living with that fear for five years is "crushing and terrifying," Thompson said. Each time the case goes to court, lawyers display the shirt worn by Thompson's son the night of the shooting. It has nine bullet holes in it.

"I don't know how to describe how it feels." Thompson said, "It isn't good." But Thompson said what angers him the most is that appeals are usually based on legal technicalities not on Berard's guilt or innocence. The automatic appeals process for people sentenced to death in Alabama requires the state to pay attorneys' fees while the case is being appealed in the state courts, according to Carroll. THE CASE is first appealed to the state Court of Criminal Appeals and then to the Alabama Supreme Court. The case can then be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the state will not pay the fees, Carroll said.

If the U.S. Supreme Court does not overturn the conviction or sentence, the convicted person can file an appeal on specific grounds in U.S. District Court and then in the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, Carroll said. company oiiiciais a tuaiu-c how they view the state's working climate.

"They said they didn't want to turn Alabama back to a slave country of the 19th Century," he said. Persuadine Alabama to reauire (fori 'Yellow Mama' has claimed 152 victims since first use in 1927 front and rear license plates would not have given 3-M a financial windfall, Coburn insisted, although he said he did not how "thousand taes" are sold iu the tats Ha nntpri thp naint contracts Teague Three or four centuries ago, people found guilty of crimes in the Americas were stoned to death, sawed in half, burned at the stake and beheaded to mention but a few methods of execution. The first execution recorded in Alabama, in 1811, was a hanging, a method used until 1927. But the state government did not administer the hangings, according to information provided by the state Department of Corrections. The counties had jurisdiction, so most criminals were hanged in the county jails.

In the 1920s, an inmate at the old Kilby Prison on Federal Drive built an electric chair. Ed Mason built for the state a solid oak, straight-back chair, which was painted yellow and later given the nickname "Yellow Mama." State prison officials rewarded the cabinetmaker from London who was sentenced in 1923 to serve 60 years in prison for burglary and grand larceny with a 30-day pass. Mason never returned from his "vacation." Authorities learned later that he was incarcerated in a New York state penitentiary. Yellow Mama was housed in old Kilby Prison until the facility was dismantled in 1970. It was then moved to Holman Prison, near Atmore.

All controls and switches are in an adjoining room. On the other side of the execution room is a witness room. Horace DeVaughan was the first person electrocuted in Alabama. Convicted of murder, he died in the chair on April 8, 1927. Between 1927 and 1965, 152 people were electrocuted 123 of them, including three women, for murder; 25 for rape; five for robbery; one for burglary; and one for carnal knowledge.

for license plate manufacturing are compeiiuveiy oia. The trip was educational, the legislators who took the junket said, with tours of the 3-M facilities and film presentations as well as cocktail parties and a visit to the state capitol where the Legislature was in session. The group also was taken on a short fishing trip on the ice, and Coburn said he caught two fish. The writer coven the Capitol and state politics for United Press International..