Amnesty International Report 1994 - United States

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Thirty-eight prisoners were executed, more than in any other year since executions resumed in 1977. The victims included four juvenile offenders. More than 2,750 prisoners were under sentence of death in 34 states. There were reports of torture and ill-treatment by police and prison officers and a number of officers were prosecuted.

Thirty-eight prisoners were executed, bringing the total number of executions since 1977 to 226. The state of Washington carried out its first execution for 29 years. Texas carried out 17 executions. Others were carried out in Virginia (five); Missouri (four); Florida (three); Arizona, Delaware and Georgia (two each); and California and Louisiana (one each).

Four juvenile offenders were executed during the year, in violation of international standards which prohibit the execution of people under 18 at the time of the crime. Curtis Harris, black, and Ruben Cantu, of Latin American origin, were executed in Texas in July and August respectively; Frederick Lashley, black, was executed in Missouri in July (he was the first juvenile offender to be executed in Missouri for over 60 years); and Christopher Burger, white, was executed in Georgia on 7 December (the last such execution in Georgia was in 1957). All were aged 17 at the time of their crimes and came from acutely deprived backgrounds.

Frederick Lashley and Ruben Cantu were both represented at their trials by lawyers who had never handled a death penalty case before. Curtis Harris and Frederick Lashley were tried before all-white juries after the prosecutor in each case had used peremptory challenges to remove all black prospective jurors.

Curtis Harris' execution took place days after the US Supreme Court had narrowly rejected an appeal in another case which claimed that a statute in force in Texas from 1976 until 1991 had been unconstitutional because it had not allowed a defendant's youth to be considered as a separate mitigating factor at the sentencing stage of a capital trial. The statute had been changed in 1991 to allow a broad range of mitigating factors to be considered, but this did not apply retroactively to prisoners, like Curtis Harris, who had been sentenced earlier.

Frederick Lashley, who had been abandoned as a baby, was convicted of the murder of his foster mother while under the influence of drugs. He had started drinking heavily when he was 10 and had been suicidal, requiring psychiatric care from an early age. He had been living on the streets at the time of the murder. His trial lawyer later stated: "Frederick's case was my first capital murder trial. At that time I had not received any training in death penalty litigation."

In January the US Supreme Court ruled that there was no constitutional right of appeal based on newly discovered evidence of innocence, where the original trial was free from procedural error. The ruling dismissed the appeal of Leonel Herrera, who was subsequently executed in Texas in May for the murder of a police officer. In 1992 his lawyers had presented new evidence alleging that his brother had committed the murder, but this was too late to be considered by the state courts. Three dissenting US Supreme Court Justices (out of nine) argued that "the execution of a person who can show that he is innocent comes perilously close to simple murder."

Several prisoners were executed despite evidence that they were mentally impaired. They included Robert Sawyer, who had a long history of mental illness and was mentally retarded - information his trial lawyer had failed to present to the jury. He was executed in Louisiana in March.

One prisoner was granted clemency: Bobby Shaw in Missouri, who also had a history of mental illness.

There were new allegations of torture and ill-treatment by police and prison officers across the country, and several officers were prosecuted.

In April, two Los Angeles police officers were convicted of federal civil rights charges arising out of the beating of black motorist Rodney King (see Amnesty International Report 1993) and sentenced to 30 months' imprisonment; two other officers were acquitted.

In June a Los Angeles police officer was charged with murder for the killing of John Daniels Jr, an unarmed black truck driver (see Amnesty International Report 1993).

In October, two former Detroit police officers, convicted of murder for the fatal beating of black motorist Malice Green in November 1992, were sentenced to prison terms of up to 18 and 25 years.

Other cases under investigation included that of Michael Bryant, black, who died in police custody in Los Angeles in March 1993. He was shot with a taser (an electric stun gun) after falling into a pool, and then "hogtied" - placed face-down in restraints with his hands and ankles tied together from behind. A coroner found the cause of death to be acute cocaine intoxication and asphyxiation from restraint procedures. There were calls for a review of restraint procedures after another suspect died in police custody in Los Angeles in September after being "hogtied".

An investigation was also being carried out into the case of Johnnie Cromartie, black, who died in police custody of head and other injuries in New York in May. Reports alleged that two white police officers repeatedly kicked him while he was lying face down with his arms handcuffed behind his back.

In February the Chicago Police Board ordered the dismissal of a former station commander after finding that he had ill-treated a suspect in 1982; two others cited in the March 1992 hearings were suspended (see Amnesty International Reports 1992 and 1993).

Inquiries were conducted by the Treasury and Justice Departments into the handling of a 51-day stand-off between federal agents and members of an armed religious cult, the Branch Davidians, in Waco, Texas, which ended in a fire in which 75 cult members died, 25 of them children. Concerns were raised, among other things, about the use of CS gas which Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents pumped into the Branch Davidian compound for several hours during the final assault in April. The Treasury's report published in October was critical of the initial raid on the compound conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, in which several cult members and four federal agents were killed; however, the Justice Department cleared the FBI of any blame for events during the siege and the final assault on the compound. Murder and conspiracy charges were pending against several surviving cult members at the end of the year.

In May the Justice Department began an investigation into more than 40 deaths in jails in Mississippi between 1987 and 1993. This followed hearings in Mississippi in April in which civil rights groups questioned the state rulings of suicide in all cases, alleging that some of the deaths were suspicious and accusing jail officials of abusing inmates. Cases raised at the hearings included that of Andre Jones, a black youth found hanged in August 1992 (see Amnesty International Report 1993). In December the Justice Department called for the closure of four Mississippi jails as a result of its investigation, and condemned substandard conditions in others that violated the Constitution. The Justice Department was still investigating the inmates' suicides at the end of the year.

There were allegations of gross medical neglect amounting to ill-treatment in the case of Steven Armstrong who died in the Moberly Correctional Centre, Missouri, in August. Several inmates alleged that the prisoner was left naked and without medication in a stripped punishment cell while suffering repeated epileptic seizures. Although health care management at the prison had changed since 1992, there had been previous deaths and allegations of inadequate health care at the institution. At the end of 1993 the prison's health care services were still investigating Steven Armstrong's medical care.

Hearings began in September in a civil suit brought by inmates of Pelican Bay Prison, a maximum security prison in California. The prisoners alleged a pattern of cruel treatment, including excessive use of force, sensory deprivation and denial of adequate medical and psychiatric care (see Amnesty International Report 1993). The trial ended in December and judgment was pending at the end of 1993.

The US Justice Department opened an investigation into the alleged widespread sexual abuse by guards of inmates at the Georgia Women's Correctional Institution (GWCI). The abuses, which reportedly continued until they were exposed in a lawsuit in 1992, included coercion of inmates into having sex with guards, forcing inmates into guard-run prostitution rings, and enforced abortions. Charges of rape and other sexual offences were pending against at least 12 employees and others had been dismissed from their jobs or transferred by the end of the year.

Damages were paid to six former inmates of the women's prison in Maryville, Ohio, who had been sexually abused by prison employees in previous years.

In July the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected an appeal by Leonard Peltier, a leader of the American Indian Movement convicted of the murder of two FBI agents in 1977. His appeal had argued that the prosecution had conceded since his trial that it did not know who had killed the agents and had changed its theory, put forward at trial, that Leonard Peltier had actually committed the killings. Other irregularities were also alleged (see previous Amnesty International Reports).

In June the US Supreme Court upheld the policy initiated by President George Bush in May 1992, and subsequently continued under President Bill Clinton, of forcibly returning all Haitians intercepted at sea outside US territorial waters to Haiti (see Amnesty International Report 1993).

Amnesty International made numerous appeals on behalf of prisoners sentenced to death, urging clemency in all cases. It condemned the execution of juvenile offenders and urged the Clinton administration to withdraw the US Government's reservation to Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights - one of a series of international treaty provisions which prohibit the execution of juveniles.

Amnesty International also expressed concern about evidence of racial discrimination in the imposition of the death penalty in juvenile cases in Texas: seven of the eight juvenile offenders on the state's death row at the end of the year were black or of Latin American origin, and there was marked evidence in some judicial circuits of gross racial disparities in the sentencing of young offenders.

The organization also criticized the US Supreme Court's ruling in the case of Leonel Herrera (see above).

In April Amnesty International wrote to the US Attorney General about the Waco, Texas, incident. The organization expressed concern about the use of CS gas, which it pointed out could be lethal if used in massive quantities in occupied areas. It called for official inquiries to examine whether the action taken by law enforcement officials was in line with international standards, including the UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials.

In June Amnesty International wrote to the US Justice Department welcoming its decision to investigate the alleged suicides in Mississippi jails, and referring to concerns it had raised in 1991 about alleged assaults of inmates at the Harrison County Jail, Mississippi.

Amnesty International wrote to the authorities about other allegations of ill-treatment in police custody or prisons, including the death of Johnnie Cromartie in New York; the allegations of medical neglect at the Moberly Correctional Centre in Missouri; and the alleged long-standing sexual abuse of inmates at the GWCI.

In February Amnesty International told the Justice Department it remained concerned by abuses of some inmates at the Montana State Penitentiary during the quelling by guards of a riot in September 1991 (see Amnesty International Report 1993). A number of Native Americans were among those allegedly ill-treated.

Amnesty International wrote to the California authorities about its concerns in the case of Geronimo ji Jaga Pratt, a former leader of the Black Panther Party serving a life sentence in California (see previous Amnesty International Reports).

In June Amnesty International wrote to the Governor of Illinois to inquire about alleged irregularities in the manner in which Manuel Salazar, a US citizen of Mexican origin, was returned from Mexico to stand trial on a capital charge in the USA, where he was subsequently sentenced to death. The organization was still seeking clarification at the end of the year.

In recommendations to the Executive Committee of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Amnesty International expressed concern about the US policy of forcibly returning all Haitian asylum-seekers directly to their country, without the possibility of having their cases heard.