The Pennsylvania Board of Pardons denied clemency today to the Pennsylvania inmate who faces execution Oct. 3 for killing two men that he alleges sexually abused him.

Three out of the five board members voted to spare Terrance “Terry” Williams from a sentence of death, but a unanimous vote was required. Reports the Philadelphia Inquirer:

With Williams’ state and federal appeals exhausted all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, the 46-year-old former Germantown High School quarterback’s last hope of escaping becoming the first person executed in Pennsylvania in 13 years lies in a hearing Thursday before Philadelphia Common Pleas M. Teresa Sarmina.

The court agreed to hear testimony from two witnesses whom Williams’ lawyers argue covered up evidence of Williams’ sexual abuse.

The clemency petition filed on behalf of Williams was supported by 22 former prosecutors and judges, 34 law professors, 40 mental health professionals and more than 36 religious leaders, and urged the board to spare from execution a man with an extensive childhood history of abuse that was never revealed to the jury. Even the widow of one of the victims submitted a letter asking that his life be spared. It was accompanied by a letter from 26 child advocates and sexual abuse experts, which stated: “The evidence of abuse in this case is clear. There can be no doubt that Terry was repeatedly and violently abused and exploited as a child and teenager by manipulative older men. Terry’s acts of violence have, alas, an explanation of the worst sort: enveloped by anger and self-hatred, Terry lashed out and killed two of the men who sexually abused him and caused him so much pain.”

The clemency petition explained:

At the time of the killing, Terry was only three and a half months past his eighteenth birthday, the minimum age for the imposition of the death penalty. On that tragic day, Terry and another 18-year-old, Marc Draper, beat Mr. Norwood to death in a cemetery in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia.

At trial, the jury was informed that Terry had prior convictions for a 1982 armed robbery and the 1984 killing of Herbert Hamilton, which Terry committed at ages 16 and 17, respectively. The jury never learned, however, that both Herbert Hamilton and Amos Norwood had sexually abused Terry, or that both killings directly related to Terry’s history of sexual abuse by these and older males, which began when Terry was only six years old. In fact, jurors heard very little about Terry’s childhood, which was marked not only by over a decade of sexual abuse, but by years of physical and emotional abuse, neglect and abandonment by those who were supposed to love and care for him. The unrelenting abuse and neglect made Terry an easy target for sexual predators. […]

Five of the jurors from Terry’s capital trial agree that Terry’s life should be spared. In recent sworn statements, they have explained that if they had known the truth about Terry’s childhood, the fact that he was exploited and sexually assaulted by the men he killed, as well as the fact that a life sentence meant life without parole, they never would have sentenced Terry to death.

According to Reason magazine, a New Hampshire officials arrested a 59 year old man and charged him with felony drug manufacturing after they discovered he was growing marijuana for personal medical and religious use. They report that he nonetheless escaped jail time because his attorney convinced the jury to nullify the charges against him:

A jury unanimously acquitted Doug Darrell, a 59-year-old Rastafarian charged with marijuana cultivation, after his lawyer, Mark Sisti, argued that a conviction would be unjust in light of the fact that Darrell was growing cannabis for his own religious and medicinal use. More remarkably, Judge James O’Neill instructed the jury that “even if you find that the State has proven each and every element of the offense charged beyond a reasonable doubt, you may still find the defendant not guilty if you have a conscientious feeling that a not guilty verdict would be a fair result in this case.”

That is New Hampshire’s model jury instruction on the nullification issue, but each judge has discretion whether to give it. In this case, since Sisti argued in favor of nullification and the prosecutor, Stacey Kaelin, argued against it, O’Neill agreed to clarify the law by giving an explicit instruction. The jury, which deliberated for six hours on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday morning, twice asked to hear the instruction again. Sisti, who has been practicing law for 33 years, says this is the first time he has persuaded a judge to tell jurors they have the power to vote their consciences.

Reason and other libertarian groups are hailing this verdict as a major victory, but it highlights more than anything the sheer randomness of jury nullification. Darrell won the lottery when he drew an unusual judge that was willing to give a nullification instruction and and equally unusual jury that was willing to nullify, but as Darrell’s own attorney points out, that does not happen very often.

Moreover, while jury nullification may seem a wonderful thing when, as here, it rescues a man from conviction for engaging in an action that most Americans believe should be legal, there is a very dark side to allowing twelve randomly selected individuals to decide whether they want the law to apply or not. As one of the minority of American judges who have endorsed jury nullification warned 40 years ago, such nullification can come at a very high price: “One often-cited abuse of the nullification power is the acquittal by bigoted juries of whites who commit crimes (lynching, for example) against blacks.”

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul who spent tens of millions of dollars seeking to buy Congress and the White House for Republicans, now has a new partner in this effort:

Joe Ricketts, the founder of what became online brokerage TD Ameritrade Inc., plans to spend $10 million airing ads supporting GOP nominee Mitt Romney and another $2 million to help Republicans running for Congress. The ads will begin airing this week. . . .

In one critical way, the Ricketts effort represents a new approach. Unlike big-money donors who have given to individual campaigns or independent political groups, including super PACs, Mr. Ricketts is doing it alone. He is funding his own super PAC, called the Ending Spending Action Fund, hired staff and has personally overseen the strategy and ads, tying him very directly to the effort.

It’s not clear yet what the ads will say about President Obama. Last May, a leaked document revealed that Ricketts considered a $10 million anti-Obama campaign starring an “extremely literate conservative African-American” that would attack Obama’s supposed image as a “metrosexual, black Abe Lincoln,” but Ricketts ultimately rejected this plan.

Ricketts’ decision to manage these ads himself, however, highlights why simply overruling Citizens United will not be enough to defeat efforts by well-moneyed individuals to buy seats in Congress or even the White House. Citizens United authorized corporations to spend their vast fortunes to elect the candidates of their choice. And it paved the road for new organizations such as super PACs, which make it easier for wealthy individuals to inject their fortunes into an election. But the truth is that the very rich have long been able to use their wealth to influence elections — just three people provided nearly $10 million to the infamous Swift Boat Veterans for Truth’s anti-Kerry campaign in 2004. Citizens United unquestionably led to a massive spike in election spending, but this likely stems as much from the fact that it let the Adelsons and the Ricketts of the world know that there was no risk that the justices would ever reign them in as it did from real changes to the law.

More than three decades ago, a very different Supreme Court recognized that campaign finance laws must be allowed “to limit the actuality and appearance of corruption.” There is no question that when a single billionaire spends $10 million to place someone in the White House, such spending at least creates the appearance of corruption. If America someday has a new Supreme Court that is not determined to give billionaires free reign to buy elections, eliminating such corrupting influence will require a whole lot more than simply restoring a world where corporations cannot fund their favorite candidates.

On Monday, the Center for American Progress Action Fund released a report outlining many of the Supreme Court cases that could be overruled if President Obama appoints just one progressive to replace a member of the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc — or, alternatively, what happens if Gov. Romney makes the Court even more conservative. Here are five examples of cases that are likely to be overruled in an Obama Supreme Court or in a Romney Supreme Court:

Four of the Court’s nine current members are over the age of 74, so the winner of November’s election could reshape the Court considerably. To learn about more cases that are on the cusp of being overruled, read the full report.

A 60-year-old man who had long suffered from bipolar disorder died in a jail cell Friday evening, hours after police tased him and placed him in isolation. Bill Williams was arrested for shoplifting at a gas station in Snohomish County, Washington. He had recently stopped taking his medication, and his family said they called the police and his case manager the previous week saying he needed to be hospitalized, but were ignored. KIRO 7 Eyewitness News reports:

“His life was so difficult. Anyway for it to end like this, and die alone in his cell, is just incomprehensible,” said Williams’ daughter, Trina Blau. “There’s a hospital right there where they could have shot him up with a sedative to figure it out. Instead, they shot him with a Taser and he’s dead.”

Surveillance video from the convenience store showed Williams jumping over the counter to grab cigarettes, and then come back for a six-pack of beer. . . .

Williams’ family said he was off his medication, and Blau called 911 Thursday trying to get him taken to the mental hospital.

“They talked to him for 15 seconds. If they would have talked to him 10 seconds longer, they would have seen he wasn’t lucid,” said Blau. “I firmly believe my dad would be alive if they would have just taken the time to listen.”

If the county medical examiner’s office determines that the Taser was the cause of death, it will add to the list of recent deaths linked to Tasers and police violence in the Puget Sound region of Washington state. In July, another mentally ill man who suffered from bipolar and post-traumatic stress disorders was tased to death. And in 2010, a spate of five deaths resulting from police violence were reported in one week, including two from Tasers. KIRO also reported that just last month, a deaf woman who called 911 for help was tased in her ribs and stomach.

This past week, a Department of Justice report found a pattern of abuse against the mentally ill in Portland that included the frequent, unnecessary use of Tasers. And a 2007 study in Houston found that police unnecessarily used Tasers on the mentally ill, even when they were warned about the person’s mental health condition.

This Thursday, the Justice Department concluded a roughly year-long review review of the treatment of the mentally ill by the police in Portland, Oregon. The report, according to Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Thomas Perez, found that “there is reasonable cause to believe that [Portland Police Bureau] is engaged in a pattern or practice of using excessive force against people with mental illness, or those perceived to have mental illness.” The Seattle Times reported a few of the incidents that make up this pattern, including, but not limited to:

• The fatal shooting of an unarmed man threatening to kill himself. The investigation was sparked by the killing of Aaron Campbell by Portland police, who were only on the scene after receiving a call that Campbell was a suicide risk.
• The frequent, unnecessary tasering of the mentally ill. According to the Times, “[t]he investigation singled out stun-gun use, saying officers frequently discharged them without justification or used them too many times on a given suspect.”
• Using a level of force disproportionate to a mentally ill suspect’s purported crime. The allegations of undue force against people suspected of low-level crimes bothered Portland Police Chief Mike Reese, who said “Fundamentally, we have to treat people in mental-health crisis with compassion and empathy. We can’t treat them the same way we do somebody that’s committed a bank robber.”

The four million Americans who suffer from “severe psychiatric disorders” have recently had their access to health care reduced as a consequence of state budget cuts, though the Affordable Care Act makes significant improvements.