A total of 45 prisoners were executed in 19 states. One state carried out its first execution for more than 30 years. More than 3,150 prisoners were under sentence of death in 34 states and under federal law. There were reports of deaths in custody, police shootings in disputed circumstances, and torture and ill-treatment of prisoners. Chain-gangs, which constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, continued to be used and were introduced for women for the first time. There were legal developments in the cases of prisoners who had alleged that their prosecutions were politically motivated.
In November, Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party candidate, was re-elected President.
In April, President Clinton signed the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act into law. The Act placed a limit on the number of habeas corpus appeals which death-row inmates could submit to federal courts, and set a time limit for filing appeals on behalf of death-row inmates.
The death penalty continued to be used extensively. In all, 45 prisoners were executed in 19 states, bringing the total number of executions since 1977 to 358. In Texas, most executions were stayed while the Court of Criminal Appeals considered whether a new law designed to shorten the time-frame for appeals in the state was constitutional. The Court upheld the law as constitutional at the end of the year.
Douglas Wright was executed in September. He was the first person to be executed in Oregon since 1962. He had chosen to drop his legal appeals.
In July, four men, two of whom had been sentenced to death, were released in Illinois after they were proved innocent. One of them, Verneal Jimerson, had had his 1978 conviction and death sentence overturned previously on appeal, after the only witness connecting him to the murder withdrew her testimony. However, in 1984, the same witness – in a deal with the prosecution to gain a reduction in her own a prison sentence – had changed her testimony again, and Verneal Jimerson was rearrested, tried and sentenced to death for a second time. He was finally released on the basis of new forensic evidence which showed that he could not have committed the crime.
In January, Governor Jim Edgar of Illinois commuted the death sentence of Guinevere García to life imprisonment the day before her execution was scheduled to take place. Guinevere García, who was convicted of killing her estranged husband, had chosen to abandon her legal appeals and allow the state to carry out her execution. The Governor cited that this was ''not the kind of case that typically results in a death sentence in Illinois'' when granting clemency. In May, the Governor of Idaho granted clemency to Don Paradis, and in November the Governor of Virginia granted clemency to Joseph Payne. Both governors cited doubts concerning the guilt of the condemned men and commuted their sentences to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Cases of deaths in custody, police shootings in disputed circumstances, and police ill-treatment continued to be reported. Victims included Frank Arzuega, an unarmed 15-year-old Puerto Rican, who was shot dead in January by an officer from the New York City Police Department (nypd) while sitting in the back seat of a suspected stolen car; Hong Il Kim, a Korean man who died in February after being shot several times by four California police officers at the end of a car chase; and Aswan Watson, an unarmed black man who died after being shot 18 times by nypd officers while sitting in a parked car in June. In April, a police video showed two sheriff's deputies from the Riverside County Sheriff's Department, California, beating Mexican immigrants Leticia González and Enrique Funez-Flores after a car chase.
No officers were charged in connection with the above cases. However, a trial was pending in the case of an nypd officer charged with manslaughter after fatally shooting an unarmed black man, Nathaniel Gaines Jr, in a New York subway in August. Three other nypd officers were charged with serious offences committed while off duty. One officer was charged with an assault on a black man outside a night-club in May, which left the victim in a coma for eight days. Two were charged with second-degree murder: one for a shooting in January, which police initially claimed was a suicide, and one for the beating and shooting to death of Charles Campbell, an unarmed black man, during a dispute over parking in October.
A state of emergency was declared in St Petersburg, Florida, in October, when rioting took place after an unarmed black teenager, Tyrone Lewis, was shot dead by a white police officer. The us Justice Department started an investigation into the shooting, which was the sixth killing by the city's police in a year.
In May, a former New York City Transit Police Department officer was sentenced to five years' probation for shooting and wounding Desmond Robinson, a black, undercover police officer (see Amnesty International Report 1996). In October, an nypd officer was acquitted by a non-jury court of criminally negligent homicide in the death of Anthony Baez (see Amnesty International Report 1996). In a controversial decision, the judge acknowledged that the officer had placed Anthony Baez in an illegal chokehold, but held that it had not been proved beyond reasonable doubt that this had caused his death. In November, one of three white police officers charged with manslaughter in the case of black motorist Johnny Gammage was acquitted by an all-white jury. The charges against the two other officers resulted in a mistrial in October; new trials were pending.
Torture and ill-treatment of prisoners were reported. There were allegations that prisoners in Georgia were systematically beaten in separate incidents by officers from an elite Tactical Squad responsible for conducting prison ''shakedowns'' (searches). The Commissioner of Corrections, Wayne Garner, is alleged to have personally supervised the searches and to have witnessed acts of ill-treatment – in which many prisoners sustained serious injuries – while taking no preventive action. Cases included an incident at Scott State Prison in January, in which unresisting prisoners allegedly received repeated beatings, and an incident in Hays Prison in July, in which several prisoners sustained serious injuries as a result of alleged beatings, both in the prison and later, during transfer.
In August, state disciplinary hearings opened into allegations that in June 1995 guards at California State Prison, Corcorcan, beat, kicked and forcibly sheared off the hair of some 36 shackled inmates who were transferred there following disturbances at another institution. The results of the hearings, which also considered appeals lodged by seven guards dismissed or demoted following the incident, were still pending at the end of the year. Meanwhile, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (fbi), was reported to be investigating other incidents in the prison, including the shooting by guards of several inmates since 1988 and allegations that guards had organized fights between rival prison gang members.
In October, 11 guards were charged with beating prisoners in a punitive segregation unit at Rikers Island prison complex in New York over a three-year period from 1992 to 1994 and with filing false reports to cover up their actions. The trial was pending at the end of the year.
According to reports, one of the guards charged with the 1994 murder of a prisoner in Terrell Unit, Texas (see Amnesty International Report 1996), who had been convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, had been granted probation in September 1995 after serving only 99 days of his sentence. A second guard who had been sentenced to eight years' imprisonment was also released early on probation.
In May, the State of Wisconsin announced its intention to use a remote controlled electro-shock belt on prisoners. The Remote Electronically Activated Control Technology (react) belt sends an electric current through the wearer's body, causing pain, incapacitation and sometimes involuntary bowel movements.
In June, Alabama agreed to end chain-gangs (the practice of shackling prisoners together in work crews) in settlement of a lawsuit (see Amnesty International Report 1996). A court ruling on the use of the ''hitching rail'' (a bar to which Alabama prisoners were chained for hours with their hands raised above their heads as punishment) was pending at the end of the year (see Amnesty International Report 1996). In September, the first chain-gangs for female prisoners were introduced in a jail in Arizona.
There were legal developments in the cases of prisoners whose prosecution had allegedly been politically motivated. In March, a motion was lodged for a retrial, based on alleged new evidence, in the case of Geronimo Pratt, the former Black Panther Party (bpp) leader, serving a life sentence for murder in California. Amnesty International had repeatedly called for a review of his case, on the basis that he may have been prosecuted because of his bpp activities as part of an fbi counter-intelligence program against the bpp in the 1970s (see previous Amnesty International Reports).
In March, the federal parole board refused to grant parole to Leonard Peltier, a member of the American Indian Movement serving two life sentences for murder. A petition for clemency in the case was still pending before President Clinton. Amnesty International had sent the parole board a copy of its 1995 communication to the Attorney General, in which the organization reiterated its concern that Leonard Peltier may have been denied a fair trial on political grounds and sought a review of the case (see previous Amnesty International Reports).
In June, Robert Norse Kahn began serving a 60-day prison term imposed for violating an injunction prohibiting the group Food Not Bombs (fnb) from distributing free food to the homeless in San Francisco, California (see previous Amnesty International Reports). He was released after a month. Meanwhile, the San Francisco authorities announced that they had reversed the previous city administration's policy of taking legal action against homeless people sleeping or drinking in public places in violation of local laws. Arrests of fnb activists declined.
Amnesty International made numerous appeals on behalf of prisoners sentenced to death, urging clemency in all cases. In June, the organization published a report, The death penalty in Georgia: Racist, arbitrary and unfair. In July, Amnesty International's Secretary General led a delegation which met Georgia's Attorney General and various civil rights organizations. In October, the us Government replied to Amnesty International's call for a Presidential Commission into the death penalty, denying that the death penalty was used in a racist manner and rejecting the request.
In June, Amnesty International published a report, usa: Police brutality and excessive force in the New York City Police Department. The report detailed widespread allegations of ill-treatment by police, deaths in custody and unjustified police shootings, dating from the mid-1980s to early 1996, mainly against members of ethnic minorities. The organization called on the New York City authorities to establish an independent inquiry to examine the extent of police ill-treatment and the effectiveness of measures taken to prevent or investigate abuses. The Mayor and the Police Commissioner declined to hold an inquiry, denying that ill-treatment was widespread and stating that complaints were already effectively investigated. Amnesty International continued to call for an inquiry and to raise new cases of unjustified police shootings of unarmed suspects and other allegations of ill-treatment, including the cases of Aswan Watson and Nathaniel Gaines Jr.
In June, Amnesty International published a report, usa: Use of electro-shock stun belts, condemning the introduction of the react belt, which the organization believed could be used to torture detainees. It called upon the us Government to ban the use and export of the belt. Amnesty International also wrote to the Governor of Wisconsin expressing concern that the proposed use of the belt on prison work crews in the state could constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, in violation of international standards. The authorities replied, defending the use of the belt in certain circumstances.
Amnesty International wrote to the authorities in Alabama, Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia and New Jersey and to the federal authorities about other reported cases of ill-treatment and deaths in custody, including the cases of Hong Il Kim, Leticia González and Enrique Funez-Flores. Amnesty International expressed concern that the latter two cases appeared to fall within a pattern of ill-treatment of latinos by police in California. The organization also sought a full inquiry by the federal authorities into the case of Kenneth Trentadue, a prisoner who allegedly committed suicide by hanging in a federal prison in Oklahoma but whose body showed signs of numerous other injuries.
In June, Amnesty International wrote to the Governor of California and to the San Francisco authorities expressing concern that Robert Norse Kahn and other fnb members may have been targeted for their beliefs and activities on behalf of the homeless, and seeking further clarification on aspects of the case. No reply had been received by the end of the year.

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