KPFT Execution Watch on November 5th

Khristian Oliver's jury consulted the Bible before sentencing him to death. On Thursday, the state of Texas plans to carry out the sentence. If they do, Execution Watch will have a show.

KPFT Houston 90.1 FM, HD-2 channel
Streaming live 6-7 p.m. CT on kpft.org and executionwatch.org.
Spotlighting Texas's badge of shame by broadcasting during executions
Scheduled Dates: www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/scheduledexecutions.htm

RADIO PROGRAM PREVIEW

EXECUTION WATCH
Nov. 5, 2009, Thurs., 6-7 pm CT
Listen on KPFT's HD-2 channel, 90.1 FM Houston, or
Go to www.executionwatch.org at 6 p.m. CT, click on “Listen.”

SCHEDULED TO BE EXECUTED
KHRISTIAN OLIVER, 32, received the death penalty for a 1998 burglary in East Texas in which the homeowner was fatally shot and beaten after he came home unexpectedly, saw intruders, got his rifle and shot a juvenile accomplice. The jury that condemned Oliver consulted the Bible during deliberations.

SHOW LINEUP
Host: RAY HILL. A civil rights activist and ex-convict, Ray has lost a dozen friends to the Texas death machine. On Friday nights he hosts and produces his own program on KPFT, the PRISON SHOW, now in its 30th year.

Legal Analyst: JIM SKELTON. Jim is a retired attorney who devotes his time to providing continuing education in appellate law. During a distinguished career, he participated in a number of capital trials, either as prosecutor or defense attorney.

Featured Interview: DANIEL P. WIRT, MD. Dr. Wirt is a pathologist in Houston who has been active for years in efforts to abolish the death penalty and to promote proper health care for convicts. He criticizes as unethical and blatantly political the state's use of normally life-saving medical procedures to carry out executions.

Reporter, Huntsville, Outside the Death House: GLORIA RUBAC, a long-time leader in the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement .

Reporter, Houston Vigil: DAVE ATWOOD, a board member and founder of Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, www.tcadp.org.

NEXT SCHEDULED EXECTION
On Nov. 5, Texas plans to execute Khristian Oliver. If that happens, we’ll have a show. Details on our website, www.executionwatch.org.

TECHNICAL ISSUES: Technical Director OTIS MACLAY omaclay @gmail.com; filling in for Otis, KPFT Evening Operations Coordinator AFSHAR KHARAT.
THEME MUSIC by VICTORIA PANETTI, www.myspace.com/shemonster.
MEDIA CONTACTS: Senior Producer ELIZABETH ALL STEIN steinea@yahoo.com; Producer MARLO BLUE.
Media representatives are aelcome to obsere the broadcast, KPFT Studios, 419 Lovett Blvd., Houston 77006.


”If they'll cancel the execution, we’ll cancel the show.”

Texas Execution Looms After Jury Consult Bible

A Texas man who faces execution after jurors at his trial consulted the Bible when deliberating his fate should have his death sentence commuted, Amnesty International said on Friday [October 9, 2009].

Khristian Oliver, 32, is set to be killed on 5 November after jurors used Biblical passages supporting the death penalty to help them decide whether he should live or die.

Amnesty International is calling on the Texas authorities to commute Khristian Oliver's death sentence. The organization considers that the jurors' use of the Bible during their sentencing deliberations raises serious questions about their impartiality.

A US federal appeals court acknowledged last year that the jurors' use of the Bible amounted to an "external influence" prohibited under the US Constitution, but nonetheless upheld the death sentence.

Khristian Oliver was sentenced to death in 1999 for a murder committed during a burglary. According to accomplice testimony at the trial, 20-year-old Oliver shot the victim before striking him on the head with a rifle butt.

After the trial, evidence emerged that jurors had consulted the Bible during their sentencing deliberations. At a hearing in June 1999, four of the jurors recalled that several Bibles had been present and highlighted passages had been passed around.

One juror had read aloud from the Bible to a group of fellow jurors, including the passage, "And if he smite him with an instrument of iron, so that he die, he is a murderer: the murderer shall surely be put to death".

The judge ruled that the jury had not acted improperly and this was upheld by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

In 2002, a Danish journalist interviewed a fifth juror. The latter said that "about 80 per cent" of the jurors had "brought scripture into the deliberation", and that the jurors had consulted the Bible "long before we ever reached a verdict".

He told the journalist he believed "the Bible is truth from page 1 to the last page", and that if civil law and biblical law were in conflict, the latter should prevail. He said that if he had been told he could not consult the Bible, "I would have left the courtroom". He described himself as a death penalty supporter, saying life imprisonment was a "burden" on the taxpayer.

In 2008, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that the jurors had "crossed an important line" by consulting specific passages in the Bible that described the very facts at issue in the case. This amounted to an "external influence" on the jury prohibited under the US Constitution.

However, it concluded that under the "highly deferential standard" by which federal courts should review state court decisions, Oliver had failed to prove that he had been prejudiced by this unconstitutional juror conduct. In April 2009, the US Supreme Court refused to take the case, despite being urged to take it by nearly 50 former US federal and state prosecutors.