Author: Michael Rushford

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections has denied a condemned murderer’s request to have his spiritual advisor with him in the death chamber during his execution Thursday.  Sean Murphy of the Associated Press reports that Rev. Jeff Hood of Arkansas will not be allowed to be with double-murderer Scott Eizember during the lethal injection process because of his multiple arrests for anti-death penalty outbursts.  Attorneys representing Eizember filed a lawsuit Monday to stop the execution until Hood is allowed in the death chamber.  They cite the U.S. Supreme Court’s March 2022 ruling in Ramirez v. Collier which announced that state’s were required to allow a murderer’s spiritual advisor to be physically present in the death chamber.  Whether this requirement includes allowing anti-death penalty activists who may use the execution as a protest opportunity is yet to be determined.  UPDATE:  Oklahoma relented and allowed Rev. Hood to be in the death chamber as Eizember was executed yesterday, as reported by CBS News.

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Shootings along with homicide rates in most large cities have increased significantly since the national crime surge accompanying the George Floyd riots.  While anti-second amendment democrat politicians including the President, the Mayor of New York City, California’s Governor and Attorney General are focused on “gun crimes” by criminals as justification to increase restrictions on gun ownership by the law-abiding public, knife crimes are not receiving the same level of political attention.  The seriousness of knife attacks was highlighted in a series of early 2022 fatal stabbings of young women beginning in January 12, when a repeat felon walked into a high-end furniture store in the very expensive Los Angeles neighborhood of Hancock Park and fatally stabbed Briana Kupfer, a college student working there.  The autopsy report indicated that Kupfer suffered from 26 stab wounds, eleven of which were to the 24-year-old’s chest.  Kupfer was also stabbed in her abdomen, pelvis, arms, and legs.

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A North Carolina man facing trial for murdering a little boy made a plea-bargain today to avoid a possible death sentence.  Andrew Mark Miller of Fox News reports that Darius Sessoms plead guilty to the August 2020 murder of five-year-old Cannon Hinnant, in exchange for a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole (LWOP).  The murder occurred when Sessoms walked up to the little boy as he was riding his bike in front of his home and shot him in the head at point-blank range.  Both of the child’s sisters witnessed the murder.  There is no known motive for the crime and the victim’s father told reporters that he considered Sessoms a friend to his family.  This plea deal would not have been available in a states which do not have a death penalty.

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When she commuted of death sentences for every condemned murderer in Oregon last week, outgoing Governor Kate Brown may have given the state’s worst murderers the opportunity for parole.  An article in CNS News by Hans Bader reports that murderers who killed their victims before 1989, the year that the state adopted true life without parole (LWOP) as the alternative to a death sentence, can petition for parole because they are not eligible for LWOP.   The state’s other thirteen condemned murderers could become eligible for release under the state’s Second Chance Law.  The Oregonian reports that the law (SB 819) was adopted last year to give prison inmates a pathway to early release.  The measure was promoted by progressives who believe that no criminal should serve more than 20 years behind bars regardless of their crime.  Governor Brown signed that bill into law.

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A group of five domestic terrorists were arrested Tuesday at a rural site in Atlanta.  Mark Miller of Fox News reports that police found explosive devices, gasoline and road flares.  All five were charged with domestic terrorism, criminal trespass and four were charged with aggravated assault.  Were these members of the dreaded QAnon, or the Proud Boys, the “domestic terrorist” groups targeted by the U.S. Department of Justice and vilified in the national media?  Nope, they are college-aged progressive anti-police activists who have been spiking trees, throwing Molotov cocktails at police, setting fires and carjacking among other crimes to stop the construction of a police training center.  The members of Stop Cop City claim they are also protecting the environment and have been living in trees adjacent to the site.  It is a sad fact that these anarchists are the product of the “woke” counterculture that is well established in colleges and universities, the national media, the federal and many state and local governments, entertainment, social media and too many U.S. corporations.

With one month left in office,  Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced that she is commuting the death sentences of all seventeen murderers on the state’s death row to life without the possibility of parole.  CBS News reports that Brown, who has earned a reputation for issuing executive orders without legislative or public input, told reporters “I have long believed that justice is not advanced by taking a life…”  In 1978 and again in 1984, Oregon voters reinstated the death penalty for the state’s worst murderers  but the democrat-controlled government has not allowed an execution since 1997.  Brown is not the only governor who substituted her views on the death penalty for those of the people she is supposed to represent.  In 2019, newly-elected California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a reprieve for the murderers on that state’s death row, and dismantled the execution chamber.  He is currently shipping the state’s worst murderers out of death row to other prisons with more pleasant living conditions.

The state of Mississippi is set to execute Thomas Edwin Loden Jr.  on Wednesday, December 14 for the 2000 kidnap, rape and murder of a 16-year-old girl.  The Associated Press reports on a judge’s ruling allowing the state to move forward with Loden’s execution despite his pending lawsuit challenging the state’s three-drug protocol.  As detailed in a 2013 federal District Court decision denying Loden’s claims on habeas corpus; on the evening of June 22, 2020 witnesses saw Lodin flirting with sixteen-year-old Leesa Marie Gray while she was working in her family’s restaurant in Dorsey, Mississippi.  At about 10:30 PM Lodin spotted Ms. Gray’s car on the side of a rural road with a flat tire.  Initially, he offered to help her, but eventually forced her into this van and drove to his grandmother’s remote farm.  “Over the course of the next few hours, he raped her numerous times and battered her sexually, videotaping portions of the abuse, before suffocating and strangling her to death inside of the van. He then pushed her nude, bound body under a fold-out seat in his van, went inside his grandmother’s house, and fell asleep.”  UPDATE:  Loden was pronounced dead at 6:12 PM Thursday.

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In an effort to protect them from deportation, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon has announced a policy that requires prosecutors to drop or reduce the charges against offenders in the country illegally.  Louis Casiano and Bill Melugin of Fox News report that the new directive requires deputy DAs to make their charging decisions based upon whether or not they would effect the possibility an offender being deported, including aliens legally in the country.   As a sanctuary state, California law prohibits local police from cooperating with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities regarding illegals, but ICE can still track down and arrest offenders who have been convicted of serious or violent crimes, without help from local police.  In many cases the new policy will result in dropping gun and gang enhancements which could trigger deportation.  This policy creates two classes of criminals in Los Angeles;  legal and illegal alien criminals who will be undercharged or diverted to avoid deportation, and U.S. citizens who break the law and face the full consequences for their crimes.  While the policy is almost certainly unconstitutional, it demonstrates how little regard for public safety or equity Gascon and his supporters have.