Newspaper Page Text
— Griffin Daily News Friday, January 23, 1976
Page 2
Killer hanged in Tokyo
TOKYO (UPI) - Kiyoshi
Okubo, 41, who lured eight
young women to rape-murder
deaths by promising them
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|1968| 119691 119701 |1971| 119721 119731 |1974| 119751
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careers as movie stars, was
hanged Thursday in Tokyo’s
Kosuge Prison.
411 on row
Supreme Court to have another look
WASHINGTON (UPI) -
There are 411 persons on death
row in 30 states, and the
Supreme Court is about to face
the question of whether they
can be executed to punish and
deter crime.
The justices decided Thurs
day to hear on March 30 a
murder case from each of five
states — North Carolina,
Georgia, Florida, Louisiana and
Texas. The issue will be
decided before the current term
ends in June.
Thirty-four states permit
capital punishment.
Proponents claim the electric
chair and the gas chamber
deter crime. Opponents say the
death penalty is morally wrong
and falls disproportionately on
blacks, the poor and the
friendless. The federal govern
ment says it is permissible in
some circumstances.
These arguments will be
made to a court whose
membership has changed since
it last spoke on the subject.
The court has been chipping
away at the death penalty for
years. Most recently, in 1972,
the justices ruled 5 to 4 that as
then administered it violated
the Bth Amendment’s ban
against “cruel and unusual
punishment.”
But of the majority only two
— Justices William Brennan Jr.
and Thurgood Marshall —
would have wiped out the
penalty completely. The other
three — William Douglas,
Potter Stewart and Byron
White — said only that capital
punishment was being imposed
freakishly, so that some defend
ants were executed and others
convicted of the same crimes
were not.
Douglas has since been
succeeded by a Ford appointee,
John Paul Stevens, whose vote
may turn out to be crucial.
All the court’s Nixon appoin
tees — Chief Justice Warren
Burger and Justices Harry
Blackmun, Lewis Powell Jr.
and William Rehnquist —
dissented on grounds the
decision rests with state legis
latures, not the courts.
The 1972 ruling left the states
free to enact new laws
authorizing capital punishment,
designed to meet the court’s
objections about inconsistent
application. Many states did,
taking different approaches.
North Carolina made death
mandatory for first-degree
murder. Florida and Georgia
provided hearings on senten
cing. In Louisiana, death is
mandatory for murder during a
felony or killing a policeman.
In Texas there are separate
sentencing hearings at which a
jury can decide whether a
convicted person is likely to
repeat the crime. A new Texas
law does not permit the death
penalty in murder cases except
when other felonies are com
mitted simultaneously or when
the victim is a policeman or
fireman performing his duty.
In the five states where cases
are being appealed there are
235 persons on death row, 152 of
them nonwhite.
The NAACP legal defense
fund says many state laws
enacted after 1972 are just as
susceptible to freakish applica
tion as the old ones. It says
executive clemency, plea bar
gaining and the power residing
in juries make carrying out the
laws as arbitrary as it ever
was.
Georgia
sentence
figures
LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga.
(UPI) — The attorney for a
Florida man sentenced to death
in Georgia thinks the U.S.
Supreme Court will rule the
death penalty unconstitutional
when it hears his client’s
appeal of the sentence in
March.
The high court Thursday set
arguments on appeals of death
sentences in five states for
March 30. The constitutional
testis whether the penalty is
“cruel and unusual punish
ment.”
The court in 1972 ruled tlie
death penalty out as then
applied. The justices agreed to
hear appeals from Georgia,
Texas, North Carolina, Florida
and Louisiana — all of which
have enacted new capital
punishment laws since the
court’s 5-4 decision.
The death sentence of Troy
Leon Gregg, 27, of St Cloud,
Fla., is one of many the high
court agreed to review.
Hughel Harrison, Gregg’s
attorney, said “the court
granted the application solely
on the question of whether the
death penalty is cruel and
unusual punishment.
“The odds are it (the death
sentence) could very well be
outlawed.”
Gregg is one of 23 persons
currently under the death
sentence in Georgia. There
have been no executions in the
state since 1964.
Gregg, now in the State
Prison at Reidsville, was
sentenced to death in 1974 for
the murder and armed robbery
of two Florida men whose
bodies were found in a drainage
ditch near here Nov. 22, 1973.
Harrison had argued in
appealing the case that among
other things, an alleged confes
sion by Gregg was illegally
obtained by police. The state
Supreme Court upheld the
conviction.
Georgia law now provides
death for crimes of rape,
armed robber, murder, kidnap
ing and airplane hijacking
where the jury “aggravating
circumstances” in the crime.
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