CrimProf Blog

Amnesty International Reports Worldwide Drop in Executions Last Year

Story here.  [Mark Godsey]

The Scalia vs. Stevens Opinion Concerning the Death Penalty

From npr.com: U.S. Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens and Antonin Scalia both voted last week that lethal injections in death penalty cases are constitutional. But that was where the agreements ended. In Stevens' opinion, he reversed the stance he held in the 1970s. Scalia criticized Stevens' reversal.

Stevens, who has served on the court for 33 years and turns 88 today, said that after seeing thousands of death penalty cases and systems over the years, he has now concluded that the death penalty is unconstitutional. But, he added, he is bound by the court's precedents upholding the capital punishment, and will adhere to them, including in the lethal injection case.

Ironically, Stevens was partly responsible for one of those key precedents. In 1976 he wrote part of the opinion ending a moratorium on the death penalty and allowing it to be used again, if special procedures were used to ensure that only criminals guilty of the most heinous crimes were executed.

In his recent last analysis, Stevens, I have relied on my own experience in reaching the conclusion that the imposition of the death penalty represents the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions to any discernible social or public purpose. A penalty with such negligible returns to the state is patently excessive and violates the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Justice Scalia responded with a rhetorical skewer. Hardest to take, he said , is Justice Stevens' "bemoaning of the enormous costs of the death penalty," since as Scalia put it, those costs are largely the creation of Justice Stevens and other justices who have encumbered capital punishment with unwarranted restrictions found nowhere in the Constitution.

And as to Stevens' new conclusion about the death penalty based on more than three decades of experience, Scalia had this to say: "Purer expression cannot be found of the principle of rule by judicial fiat. In the face of Justice Stevens experience, the experience of all others, in state legislature or Congress, is, it appears of little consequence." Listen. . . [Mark Godsey]

Nebraska Supreme Court Refuses to Reconsider Electrocution as Cruel and Unusual

From journalstar.com: The Nebraska Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to reconsider its decision that electrocution is unconstitutional.

The decision was handed down by the court in response to Attorney General Jon Bruning’s request for another hearing in the case. The court did not explain its decision.

It didn’t come as a surprise — Bruning had said he didn’t expect judges who made the landmark decision to change their minds.

“Nebraskans overwhelmingly support the death penalty. We’ll do everything possible to ensure the sentences of the state’s worst murderers are carried out,” he said Wednesday.

His office plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Missouri Governor Writes a Brief Supporting the Death Penalty for Child Rapists

From kansascity.com: Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt has filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court supporting the death penalty for child rapists.

The “friends of the court” brief supports the state of Louisiana, which is defending a law authorizing the death penalty for offenders who rape children younger than 12.

Blunt proposed a similar law for Missouri in December and encouraged lawmakers in his State of the State address in January to pass such legislation.

State lawmakers have introduced bills in the Senate and the House this year that would allow the death penalty in forcible rape and forcible sodomy cases involving children. Neither bill has made much progress.

Opponents have said such legislation could do more harm than good by encouraging rapists to kill their victims, since the penalties would be the same.

Blunt argues in the brief, filed Thursday, that the court “should not foreclose a national debate on appropriate punishment for child rape,” and that discussion at the state level is the best way to determine a national consensus. Rest of Article. . .[Mark Godsey]

SCOTUS Reversed Death Penalty in Case Work on by Pierce Law Students

Franklin Pierce Law Center's Frederick Millett, a third-year student from Grand Haven, MI, is celebrating this week after learning that the death penalty case he worked on as an extern this past fall at the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, GA was reversed by the United States Supreme Court. On Wednesday, March 19, the Court issued an opinion, authored by Alito, reversing, the conviction in the case of Snyder v. Louisiana. Millett worked with Attorney Stephen Bright, president and founder of the SCHR, to prepare the reply brief.

According to Millett, “In 1996, as in 1939, Allen Snyder, an African-American, was convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death, this time in Jefferson Parish, LA.  The prosecutor in his case struck all five potential black jurors using nearly half of his peremptory challenges to get an all-white jury. 

The prosecutor then, both in the media and to the jury during the sentencing phase, compared Snyder's case to the O.J. Simpson case, decided just a year earlier, and urged the all-white jury to not let Snyder ‘get away with it’ like O.J. did.  The jury sentenced Snyder to death and his conviction was upheld twice by the Louisiana Supreme Court.  Snyder appealed to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that since the prosecutor peremptorily struck African-American jurors because of their race, his conviction and death sentence were unconstitutional based on the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.  For this reason, the Supreme Court of the United States agreed to hear the case and granted certiorari.”

Cali Death Penalty Panel to Discuss Reasons for Reversals

From mercurynews.com: The California Supreme Court last year overturned convicted killer James Hardy's 1984 death sentence because a defense lawyer's "meager" effort representing him undermined the chance of a fair trial. And just a few weeks ago, a federal appeals court gave a reprieve to Earl Lloyd Jackson, one of the state's longest-serving death row inmates, because of a prosecutor's blunders during his 1979 trial.

The appellate rulings provide an all-too-common snapshot of California's death penalty system. Shoddy representation and prosecutorial miscues are two of the most common reasons that death row inmates have had a better chance of getting their death sentences reversed than of being executed.

A state commission examining California's death penalty system on Wednesday will focus on those issues in the second round of hearings on the subject. The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice will hear from more than a dozen witnesses at the hearings, which are being held in Los Angeles.

The commission hearing last month focused on broad concerns about the state's death penalty, particularly the prolonged delays in state and federal appeals.

This week's hearing will zero in on problems with capital trials, which have left more than 660 inmates on the state's death row. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Nebraska Supreme Court Declares Death by Electrocution Unconstitutional

From nytimes.com:  The electric chair is cruel and unusual punishment, the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled Friday, effectively suspending executions in the only state that made sole use of the practice, once the dominant form of execution in the United States.  The court, in a 6-to-1 decision, ruled that electrocution, the only method of execution used in the state, violates the state constitution. “The evidence shows that electrocution inflicts intense pain and agonizing suffering,” Justice William Connolly wrote for the majority.  Rest of Article [Mike Mannheimer]

11th Circuit Lifts Stay of Execution

From ap.com: A federal appeals court has lifted a stay of execution for James Harvey Callahan, who is scheduled to be executed Thursday, but it could be delayed again by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court on Jan. 7 heard oral arguments in a Kentucky challenge to lethal injection, a case that has delayed executions nationwide. A ruling is unlikely before spring. Alabama uses lethal injection in its executions.

In a 2-1 decision, the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday lifted the stay granted by U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins in Montgomery on Dec. 14.

The court said Callahan waited too late to challenge the method of execution.

Callahan, who is now scheduled to die at 6 p.m. Thursday at Holman prison near Atmore, was sentenced to death for the kidnapping, rape and murder of Jacksonville State University student Rebecca Suzanne Howell on Feb. 4, 1982.

Authorities said she was abducted from a coin laundry in Jacksonville and raped before being strangled and dumped in Tallasseehatchee Creek.

In lifting the stay, the 11th Circuit ruling said it did not make any finding on "the relative merits of Callahan's constitutional claim because we conclude the claim is barred by the statue of limitations."

Judges Gerald Tjoflat and Susan Black, forming the majority, said the two-year time deadline began on July 31, 2002, when Callahan selected lethal injection as the method by which he would be put to death. They said he waited more than two years after the deadline expired to challenge lethal injection.

Questioning Jury about Opposing the Death Peanlty is not Required on Constitutional Grounds

From ap.org: A judge's failure to question jurors who indicated they opposed the death penalty is not reason enough to overturn the convictions of two men in the killing of a police informant, a federal appeals court says.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals encouraged judges to question potential jurors orally about their opposition to the death penalty, but it said such questioning is not required on constitutional grounds.

The U.S. Supreme Court has held that prospective jurors may be excluded from jury service in capital cases if they indicate that they will automatically vote for or against the death penalty in every case.

In a decision dated Friday, the three-judge appeals panel from the 2nd Circuit upheld the convictions of Alan Quinones and Diego Rodriguez, rejecting defense arguments that their convictions should be reversed because the trial judge did not orally question jurors who indicated on questionnaires that they were opposed to the death penalty.

The men were convicted in 2004 of racketeering, drug trafficking and the 1999 murder of Eddie Santiago, an informant for the New York Police Department. During the penalty phase, jurors unanimously decided not to impose death.

The appeals panel noted that other trial judges in Manhattan have routinely questioned jurors who wrote in questionnaires that they oppose the death penalty.

"The practice is commendable," the panel said. "The bluntness or hesitancy, confidence or discomfort, displayed by prospective jurors as they respond to questions about the possibility of returning a capital verdict often reveals as much about bias as the actual answers given." Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Lethal Injection Resource Kit Provided by U.C. Berkeley Death Penalty Clinic

Lethalinjection.org is a project of the Death Penalty Clinic at U.C. Berkeley School of Law. The mission of lethalinjection.org is to create a web-based clearinghouse for information about lethal injection and challenges to lethal injection as a method of execution. The members of the Death Penalty Clinic continually working on the development of this website. They frequently post new features, updated design, and up-to-date information about lethal injection challenges, including the Baze v. Rees case  currently pending in the United States Supreme Court. Check it out. . .[Mark Godsey]

Spotlight on a Texas Capital Crimes Defense Attorney

From observer.guardian.co.uk: The Observer recently published an article showcasing the life of a death penalty defense attorney in Texas.  Here is an excerpt:

Texas sentences more people to death than any other state in America, and the emotional toll on its defence lawyers is so great that many only ever work on a handful of cases. Not so Jerry Guerinot. He's defended 39 men and women. The bad news: 20 have been sentenced to death.

A few miles west of downtown Houston, in his office on a scruffy industrial estate, Jerry Guerinot, probably America's most dangerous defence lawyer, reflects on his career. For a conscientious attorney, death penalty murder trials create 'absolutely the most pressure you can have', he says emphatically. 'You never want anybody to be sentenced to death on your watch. I'm never happy to see anybody get sentenced to death. I don't think anybody could ever be happy.'

Guerinot, a big man with a booming voice and thinning, silvery hair, says that at the age of 62 he's finally had enough of the legal death business in which he's toiled for more than 25 years. '[If] the state tries you for the death penalty in Harris County [the jurisdiction in which Houston sits], the chances of you getting it are huge. And the chances of you having it carried out against you are even bigger.' Guerinot is right - as of July this year, 98 Harris County men and two women have been dispatched since the US Supreme Court restored the death penalty in 1976. Houston has 1.3 per cent of America's population but carries out 10 per cent of its executions.

But however great the trauma of losing a client, Guerinot, who earlier acted as a prosecutor in six cases in which the defendant received the death penalty, says he can't recall how many of those he defended have been sentenced to die in Texas's well-used lethal injection chambers: 'I want to say maybe 10 to 15, somewhere in there.' But he cannot, he admits, remember them all: 'There's just so many.'

According to Guerinot, 'significantly more did not get death than got death'. In fact, no fewer than 20 of the men and women Guerinot has represented since he turned to defence work have been sentenced to death. Two had their sentences commuted when the Supreme Court ruled in 2005 against capital punishment for juveniles, because they were under 18 when they committed their crimes. Thirteen are still on death row. Five have already been executed, the most recent last year. Rest of Article. . .

[Mark Godsey]

 

Cali Supreme Court Seeks Amendment to Allow Death Penalty Appeals to Go to Appellate Courts Instead of Supreme Court

From ap.org: The State Supreme Court will seek an amendment to the California constitution that would change the death penalty appeals process to help ease the court's backlog of cases, the chief justice said.

Under the current system, death sentences are automatically appealed to the California Supreme Court.

The proposal would allow many cases to be handled by one of the state's six appeals courts, with the high court stepping in when a significant legal issue needs resolution or justices find another reason to review it.

The number of automatic death sentence appeals already threatens to overwhelm the Supreme Court's docket, making up about 20 percent of the court's caseload, Chief Justice Ronald M. George said.

"I don't want to pretend this is going to solve all the problems. But it will solve a big part of it," he said Monday.

The average wait for execution in the state is now 17.5 years. The backlog is likely to grow, considering the trend: Thirty people have been on death row for more than 25 years, 119 for more than 20 years and 408 for more than a decade. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

New Jersey May be First State to Repeal the Death Penalty Since 1976

The eight men confined to the Capital Sentences Unit of 3 Wing in the New Jersey State Prison, ranging in age from 77 to 30, have a better chance of dying of old age than they do of lethal injection on an executioner’s gurney.

For one thing, the state has not executed anyone since 1963.

But in a move that is being closely watched by both sides of the capital punishment debate, New Jersey is on track to become the first state to repeal the death penalty since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed executions to resume in 1976.

A bill that would abolish New Jersey’s death penalty was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee this spring and is now on a fast track to be considered by both houses within weeks. The Senate president, Richard J. Codey, who supports the measure, said this month that he planned to bring the bill to a vote before the full chamber by the end of the year. Rest of Article. . .  [Mark Godsey]

Questioning the State of the Death Penalty

Although polls show that about 65 percent of the public still supports capital punishment in the abstract, the number of juries opting for death has plunged, from 317 in 1996 to 128 in 2005, the latest year for which complete data are available. Similarly, the number of executions has dropped from a modern high of 98 in 1999 to 53 in 2006.

At the same time, experts agree, many prosecutors have become more reluctant to seek the death sentence.

And now the Supreme Court has imposed a de facto moratorium on executions while it considers the claims of two Kentucky death-row inmates (Baze v. Rees) and others that the often-botched lethal-injection method used by most states and the federal government may inflict gratuitous pain on condemned prisoners.

The best that death-penalty opponents can hope for in the Kentucky case is a decision requiring states to devise a less error-prone, more pain-free execution procedure. Whatever the outcome, we will probably see a temporary spike in executions after the moratorium ends.

But four factors -- more significant than anything that the justices have done or will probably do -- seem likely to keep the number of death sentences and executions down in the long run.

 

• Irrefutable DNA evidence has exonerated some 15 death-row inmates and almost 200 other men convicted of murder or rape, mostly since the late 1990s. This DNA-evidence revolution, along with non-DNA evidence proving the innocence of a great many more condemned men and other prisoners, has alerted many who support the death penalty in principle to the fallibility of the criminal-justice system and the risk of executing innocent people.

 

• More and more murder defendants have competent trial lawyers, thanks to judicial and legislative decisions requiring more state spending on indigent defense and the work of nonprofits and pro bono lawyers. Few defendants with good trial lawyers get death sentences. And the costs to the state of a well-defended death-penalty trial are often much higher than the costs of imprisoning the defendant for life. All of this has made prosecutors more reluctant to seek death.

 

• Fewer jurors believe that a death sentence is the only sure way to keep a murderer off the streets. The main reason is that more states -- notably including Texas, which leads the nation in executions -- have provided life imprisonment without the possibility of parole as an alternative.

  (To be sure, a somewhat related reason for the drop in death sentencing -- the greatly diminished public fear of crime after the dramatic decline in crime rates between 1994 and 2005 -- could prove transitory if the rise in crime rates over the past two years accelerates.)

   

• Finally, for many centuries people have recoiled against one execution method after another, despite efforts to make them less horrible and less painful. The same seems true now.

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

SCOTUS Blocks Execution of Florida Man

From NYTimes.com: The Supreme Court is blocking the execution of a convicted child killer in Florida.    Hours before Mark Schwab was scheduled to die, the high court stepped in, as it was widely expected to do.

The court is considering the appeals of two inmates in Kentucky who are challenging the same drug combination that is used in Florida to put inmates to death.

Schwab was sentenced to death for the murder of an 11-year-old boy. He'd seen the boy's picture in the newspaper shortly after Schwab was released from prison on a sexual assault sentence. He gained the confidence of the family by claiming he was with the newspaper and was writing an article about the boy.

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Berkeley's Death Penalty Clinic Files Amicus Brief in Support of Petitioner in Baze v. Rees

Lethal injection executions in this country are performed by untrained, unqualified prison employees using inadequate equipment and following incomprehensible protocols, according to an amicus brief filed today by the Death Penalty Clinic (DPC) at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. The brief was filed in support of the Petitioner in Baze v. Rees, currently pending in the U.S. Supreme Court.

The clinic surveyed thousands of pages of documents from more than a dozen states, concluding that states have "turned a blind eye" to the foreseeable problems inherent in the three-drug lethal injection formula, and have allowed "ignorance and neglect—rather than science and deliberation—to guide the formation and implementation of lethal injection protocols." The Supreme Court is likely to hear oral argument in the Baze case in January of 2008.

Clinic Associate Director Ty Alper, counsel of record for the clinic, and Professor Elisabeth Semel, the clinic's director, filed the brief on behalf of death-sentenced inmates who are litigating lethal injection challenges in California, Missouri, Maryland, and Florida. The brief, prepared with the assistance of the clinic's Eighth Amendment fellow and two clinic students, begins by explaining the dangers inherent in the three-drug formula, and describes how the failure to correctly administer anesthesia to the inmate can result in an excruciatingly painful, and torturous, death. Alper announced that the brief details the "widespread lack of professionalism and competency in the administration of lethal injection in this country."

The following are just a few of the Death Penalty Clinic's findings:

• Executioners in many states have never even read the lethal injection protocols that supposedly govern their actions. For example, in California, an execution team member was asked whether she had read the protocol. She responded, "I don't know what you're talking about." In Maryland, the execution team leader had never seen a copy of the execution operations manual.

• Executioners in many states have received no training with respect to implementation of the three-drug protocol. For example, in California, executioners testified that "we don't really have training, really" and that there are no procedures in place to deal with foreseeable malfunctions in the execution equipment. In Florida, where then-Governor Jeb Bush declared a moratorium on executions after a horribly botched lethal injection execution, the state's primary executioner testified that he had no medical training or qualifications, nor had he received any training to conduct executions.

• Executioners in many states are utterly unqualified to perform executions. For example, the doctor responsible for overseeing executions in Missouri has been sued for malpractice more than 20 times, and has been reprimanded by the State's medical board. Although a federal judge banned him from participating in Missouri executions, the Federal Government has used him as a consultant on its lethal injection protocols. In California, a federal judge suggested a criminal investigation may be necessary to investigate whether execution team members at San Quentin State Prison have been stealing some of the execution drugs instead of using them for practice executions.

• Lethal injections in some states have been governed by incomprehensible or nonsensical protocols. For example, until this year, Tennessee's lethal injection protocol was so poorly drafted that it contained instructions for the electrocution of the inmate, including shaving his head and ensuring a fire extinguisher was nearby prior to the lethal injection. In Oklahoma and North Carolina, protocols called for prison employees to administer a dose of anesthesia after the inmate was already dead. [Mark Godsey]

SCOTUS Accepts Death Penalty Case

From NYTimes.com: The SCOTUS agreed today to review the case of an Idaho death row inmate who was condemned after following his lawyer’s advice to reject a plea bargain that would have spared his life.      

Maxwell Hoffman was sentenced to death after being convicted of taking part in the murder of Denise Williams, a police informant in a drug deal, in 1987. Mr. Hoffman slit the victim’s throat and left her in a cave at a remote campsite, according to court papers.

When Ms. Williams tried to crawl to safety, she was stabbed by one of Mr. Hoffman’s accomplices. A third accomplice then joined with Mr. Hoffman in burying Ms. Williams under rocks, documents state. The victim died of a blow from a rock.

The justices will weigh whether the advice of Mr. Hoffman’s lawyer was so bad as to render it unconstitutionally ineffective. Courts have long held that a defense lawyer’s work need not be perfect, or anything close to it, and that a lawyer is entitled to wide latitude on trial tactics, even if they appear questionable in the clarity of hindsight.

Mr. Hoffman was sentenced to death in 1989. The Idaho state courts upheld the conviction and sentence, so the defendant turned to the federal courts. The case the justices accepted today is an appeal by the state of Idaho of a 2006 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. That court held that because of the ineffectiveness of Mr. Hoffman’s lawyer in the sentencing phase of the trial, the defendant should be released or allowed to accept the plea-bargain he originally rejected.

Five weeks before the trial began, prosecutors said that they would not seek the death penalty if Mr. Hoffman pleaded guilty to first-degree murder, but that they would seek a death sentence if he chose to go to trial.

Mr. Hoffman’s lawyer, William Wellman, believed at the time that Idaho’s death penalty-sentencing procedures would soon be declared unconstitutional because they were similar to those in Arizona, which had been voided by the Ninth Circuit. In particular, the lawyer was confident that the Idaho system of having a judge, not a jury, decide whether to impose a death sentence would be struck down.

In fact, several years after Mr. Hoffman’s conviction the Idaho procedure was changed to give jurors the final say on whether someone should be sentenced to death. And a 2002 Supreme Court decision, Ring v. Arizona, held that sentencing by judges alone is unconstitutional in death-penalty cases.

But, the Ninth Circuit noted, the Supreme Court “has also held that Ring is not to be applied retroactively.” Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

ABA Calls for Nationwide Moratorium of Executions

From Reuters/yahoonews.com: The American Bar Association said on Monday it was renewing its call for a nationwide moratorium on executions, based on a three-year study of death penalty systems in eight states that found unfairness and other flaws.

The lawyers' group said its study identified key problems, such as major racial disparities, incompetent defense services for poor defendants and irregular clemency review processes, making those death penalty systems operate unfairly.

The American Bar Association in 2001 launched its Death Penalty Moratorium Implementation Project as the next step toward a nationwide moratorium on executions. The study was part of that project.

The project was created to encourage state government leaders to establish moratoriums and undertake detailed examinations of capital punishment laws and systems in their jurisdictions.

The eight states in the study were Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

The study did not include Texas, which is by far the most active capital punishment state. Since 1976, Texas conducted 405 executions, distantly followed by Virginia with 98, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

TX Judge Decides to Allow Execution Instead of Giving a 20 Minute Extension

From NYTimes.com: The presiding judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals is the target of a rising national outcry a month after turning away the last appeal of a death row inmate because the rushed filing was delayed past the court’s 5 p.m. closing time.

The inmate, Michael Richard, was then executed for a 1986 sexual assault and murder — the last person to die in Texas while the US Supreme Court reviews the constitutionality of lethal injection.

The judge, Sharon Keller, has said she did not know that Mr. Richard’s defense lawyers in Houston were having computer problems when they asked the court for 20 more minutes to deliver their final state appeal to Austin hours before the scheduled execution on Sept. 25.

Without a definitive ruling from the state court, the lawyers could not properly appeal to the United States Supreme Court to block the execution.

Judge Keller, a Republican who was elected to her second six-year term last year, declined through her office this week to comment.

The court does not accept computer filings, although one of the court’s judges, Tom Price, said in an interview this week, “We’re reviewing all our procedures and policies.”

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Man Gets Death Penalty for

leaving little girl to be eaten by alligators.

Sister Helen Prejean To Speak at St. Thomas School of Law

Death penalty opponent Sister Helen Prejean will speak at the University of St. Thomas School of Law on Monday, Oct. 22, in the Schulze Grand Atrium in the School of Law building.

Her talk, “Dead Man Walking – The Journey Continues,” will begin at 12:30 p.m. and will conclude by 1:30 p.m.

Prejean is an outspoken death penalty opponent who has written extensively about the subject. Her books include The Death of Innocents and Dead Man Walking, the book on which the film was based. Over the years she has been honored by many groups for her prison ministry. 

[Mark Godsey]

Texas High Court Could Be Halting Executions

From statesman.com: Roiled by internal dissent over its handling of a previous execution appeal, Texas' highest criminal court Tuesday blocked the state from carrying out its next scheduled execution — signaling a temporary halt for the nation's busiest death chamber.

Heliberto Chi was scheduled to die tonight for the 2001 killing of an Arlington store manager.

Instead, the Honduran man became the second Texas inmate to win a court-ordered reprieve while the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether the method of lethal injection used in Texas and three dozen other states violates the U.S. Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

The Supreme Court last week blocked Texas from executing Carlton Turner Jr. while the lethal injection challenge is pending.

"It seems clear, based on the actions (by the two courts), that executions will be on hold for the next several months," said Andrea Keilen, executive director of the Texas Defender Service, which helped defend Chi. "We have what seems to be a temporary stop."

Chi's stay of execution, delivered in an unsigned but unanimous order from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, gives Tarrant County prosecutors 30 days to file briefs rebutting Chi's claim that the three drugs used for lethal injection can subject inmates to intense pain.

The Chi ruling came as new details emerged about the Texas court's refusal to stay open past 5 p.m. on Sept. 25 so lawyers could file an appeal on behalf of death row inmate Michael Richard. The Supreme Court had accepted the lethal injection case earlier that day, and Richard's lawyers argued that the extra time was needed to respond to the new circumstances and to address computer problems that delayed the printing of Richard's motion. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

DPIC Launches Capital Punishment in COntext

The Death Penalty Information Center recently launched Capital Punishment in Context, an innovative college-level curriculum that uses real-life capital cases to foster the research and analytical skills of college students. Capital Punishment in Context contains two teaching cases of individuals who were sentenced to death in the United States, Gary Graham and Juan Raul Garza, that are vehicles for engaging the larger issues surrounding capital punishment. The curriculum provides a detailed narrative account of each individual's legal case, including resources such as the original reports from the homicide investigation, affidavits, and transcripts of testimony from witnesses. 

Available for free through a simple registration process, Capital Punishment in Context incorporates detailed teaching notes, sample syllabi, and a variety of supplementary materials to support instructors from multiple disciplines such as sociology, criminology, legal studies, literature, writing, statistics, and religion. [Mark Godsey]

Nebraska May Finally Stop Using the Electric Chair

From Omaha.com: The fate of Nebraska's electric chair will be on the docket today at the Nebraska Supreme Court. The high court will hear arguments on whether the electric chair, Nebraska's sole means of execution, is constitutional.

The case being argued involves an appeal filed by death-row inmate Raymond Mata Jr. But it also could affect the case of death row inmate Carey Dean Moore, who came within days of being executed in May.

The court cited the Mata appeal when it abruptly halted Moore's scheduled execution. The court said the legal questions surrounding the electric chair needed to be resolved before another inmate was put to death in Nebraska.

"We conclude that we acted prematurely in ordering a death warrant before resolving that constitutional question in State v. Mata," the court wrote on May 2, six days before Moore was slated to die.

Nebraska is the only state in which the electric chair is the sole means of execution. Many other states have switched to lethal injection, raising the question of whether Nebraska's chair now constitutes unusual, if not cruel, punishment. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Texas Governor Stops an Execution

From NPR.com:  Thursday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry stopped the execution of a death row inmate who was scheduled to die hours later. It was a rare move for a state that has executed more inmates than any other. It came after media reports and pressure from the European Union to halt the execution.

Listen. . . [Mark Godsey]

Cali's Death Penalty System Falls Behind

From latimes.com: The death penalty system in California is so backed up that the state would have to execute five prisoners a month for the next 10 years just to clear the prisoners already on death row.

The average wait for execution in the state is 17.2 years, twice the national figure. And the backlog is likely to grow, considering the trend: Thirty people have been on death row for more than 25 years, 119 for more than 20 years and 408 for more than a decade.

These statistics were cited by an influential judge in a recent article, one in a small but growing number of critiques of California's death penalty machinery, which has proved to be so clogged that one jurist has called capital punishment in the state an illusion. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Florida Plans to Expand Its Lethal Injection Team

From heraldtribune.com: At Florida lethal injections, a man in a purple moon suit leans over the dying inmate to listen for a heartbeat and feel for a pulse. After a few seconds, he nods and an announcement is made to the witnesses that the execution has been completed.

The man is a doctor and the attire shields his identity - not just from the prisoner's family and friends, but from the American Medical Association. Its code of ethics bars members from participating in executions, as do those of the American Nurses Association, the American Society of Anesthesiologists and the Florida Medical Association.

Despite those codes, Florida will ask Marion County Circuit Judge Carven D. Angel on Tuesday to approve its plan to add more doctors, nurses, phlebotomists (people trained to draw blood) and other medical professionals to its lethal injection teams - something that's done in other states.

But death penalty experts say Florida is the only state that uses a moon suit to shield the doctor's identity - although some others draw curtains or remove the execution witnesses before the doctor emerges. The plastic moon suit, similar to those worn by hazardous materials teams, covers the doctor completely from head to toe. Goggles worn beneath the clear plastic face shield conceals the doctor's identity even further. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Getwaway Driver's Execution Draws Near

From dallasnews.com: Kenneth Foster's supporters say he was up for getting high and robbing a few people on that San Antonio night in 1996 but never anticipated the spree would lead to murder.

He was in a car nearly 90 feet away when one of his partners shot and killed Michael LaHood in what jurors determined was a botched robbery. Barring a last-minute commutation by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Gov. Rick Perry, he'll be executed for the crime Aug. 30.

Mr. Foster is one of an estimated 80 Texas death row inmates convicted under the state's "law of parties" – which authorizes capital punishment for accomplices who either intended to kill or "should have anticipated" a murder, regardless of whether they pulled the trigger.

Most states have such laws for many types of crimes, but Texas is the only state to apply it broadly to capital cases. Death penalty opponents decry its use, saying it broadens capital punishment far too much.

Prosecutors argue that all those responsible must be held accountable for such heinous acts.

"But for Mr. Foster driving that car, but for his planning, his decision to engage in this crime, Mr. LaHood would be alive," said Cliff Herberg, a Bexar County first assistant district attorney whose office prosecuted the case. Letting Mr. Foster off the hook "would be like saying the 9/11 hijackers on the plane weren't guilty of anything because they're not the ones who flew it."

Opponents of the death penalty hope the Foster case brings a focus to the issue. They're holding rallies, sending mass e-mails and operating blogs aimed at tearing down the Texas law of parties.

Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Dean John Carroll Says Alabama Death Penalty Needs Work

From al.com: Alabama's death penalty law has flaws that should be addressed, says John Carroll, dean of the Cumberland School of Law at Samford University.

Open dialogue with state officials about some suggested reforms is needed, Carroll said during Tuesday's Kiwanis Club of Birmingham luncheon at The Harbert Center.

"It's a difficult topic because it involves huge emotions," said Carroll, who has defended people in and presided over death penalty cases in the past. In some instances, such cases involve politics, he said.

Carroll said 195 people in Alabama have been sentenced to death. In 2005, Alabama sentenced more people to death than Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee combined, he said. Since 1976, seven people sent to Death Row in Alabama and 120 elsewhere in the country have been exonerated, he said.

Carroll was a member of the American Bar Association's death penalty assessment team for Alabama from 2005 to 2006. Some reforms the team suggests include:

Revamping indigent defense services at trial and on direct appeal. Problems include the lack of training for lawyers on death penalty case procedures and caps on fees for appeal ($2,000) and post-conviction ($1,000).  Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Santa Clara Law Hosts Training Program for Death Penalty Attorneys

Defense lawyers with pending capital cases will come to college at Santa Clara Law on Aug 4 for a six-day intensive training program with some of the nation's leading death penalty attorneys.

The 17th annual  Death Penalty College offers intensive training where defense lawyers discuss their cases in small-group workshops. The Death Penalty College is presented by Santa Clar University, the California Attorneys for Criminal Justice, and the California Public Defenders Association and co-sponsored by the American Bar Association's Death Penalty Representation Project

The workshop sessions, which begin Aug 4 and continue through Aug. 9, are not open to the public because of lawyer-client privilege. (Faculty will be available for media interviews.)

"The college fosters a feeling of cooperation and community among participants and faculty who are united in the common goal of saving lives," said Ellen Kreitzberg, director of the Death Penalty College and professor of criminal law at Santa Clara University School of Law. “Every criminal defense attorney faces his or her greatest challenge in the representation of a person charged in a capital case," said Kreitzberg who directs the program. This program is unique in that lawyers work on their actual cases and not on a casebook hypothetical.

The SCU law school program has consistently attracted leading death penalty attorneys from across the country.

The Death Penalty College has been approved for 36 hours of minimum continuing legal education credit by the State Bar of California. Participants pay tuition to attend the program, and death penalty attorneys volunteer as faculty. The college focuses on helping attorneys learn how to prepare and present the penalty phase of a death penalty case, which is held after a guilty verdict has been reached in a criminal trial. During the penalty phase, a jury considers factors that shape a defendant's life.

[Mark Godsey]

The ACLU Wants Executioners' Names

From clevelandplaindealer.com: Ohio has found itself in the cross hairs of the latest national debate over the death penalty: Should executioners' identities be protected?

The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio raised the question with a wide-ranging request for state records seeking information on the May 24 execution of an inmate whose veins took 90 minutes to find and whose death came a record-setting 16 minutes after the toxic drugs began to flow.

Among other things, the ACLU asked for the names of Christopher Newton's execution team - a group of volunteer medics and guards whose identities are routinely shielded by the state.

Though the hooded executioner is so common as to be iconic, the ACLU and other death penalty opponents say they have new cause for seeking complete information on the people carrying out state-sanctioned deaths by injection. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Missouri is Back in the Execution Business

From STLToday.com: Federal appeals judges in St. Louis put Missouri back in the execution business Monday, finding there are sufficient safeguards to protect the condemned against pain from lethal injection.

State officials pledged to resume the process immediately but could not say who would go next, or when.

Lawyers for Michael A. Taylor, a Kansas City killer whose appeal is at the center of the case, began preparing to seek a reconsideration by the full 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. If that fails, they said, they will seek review by the U.S. Supreme Court. Such an appeal could take until fall.

Lethal injection, the primary method used by 37 of the 38 states with the death penalty, is under heavy assault by critics who claim the combination of drugs used could simultaneously cause excruciating pain and mask it. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Arizona Getting Criticism for Execution Method

From azcentral.com: Arizona is gearing up to resume executions after a nearly seven-year hiatus. Another Arizona death-row inmate recently lost his last appeal. A third may be extradited from West Virginia.

But as Arizona lapsed in executions, lethal injection, its preferred method, has come under scrutiny as possibly cruel and inhumane.

In fact, a last-minute motion for reprieve filed on Comer's behalf by a Tucson capital-punishment watchdog group raised the risk of extreme suffering as grounds for a stay of execution.

The Arizona Supreme Court refused to consider the motion.

Of the 37 states that use lethal injection as a means of execution, more than a dozen have either granted stays or have completely halted executions because of legal or ethical challenges.

The Arizona Department of Corrections does not reveal the exact prescriptions and protocols of its lethal-injection procedures.

"Because of the lack of standards provided for in the statute, the lethal-injection process subjects condemned prisoners to significant and utterly unnecessary risks that they will be tortured to death," said public defender Victoria Washington, who, to no avail, has filed motions about the potential cruelty of lethal injection. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Louisiana Supreme Court Upholds Death Penalty for Rapist

From NYTimes.com: The Louisiana Supreme Court yesterday upheld the death sentence of a man convicted of raping an 8-year-old girl. Legal experts say the man, Patrick Kennedy, is the only inmate on death row in the United States who was not convicted of committing or participating in a killing.

“Looming over this case,” Justice Jeffrey P. Victory wrote for the majority in the 6-to-1 decision, “is the potential for the defendant to be the first person executed for committing an aggravated rape in which the victim survived” since the enactment of a 1995 state law that allows capital punishment for the rape of a child under 12.

In 1977, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty could not be imposed for the rape of an adult woman. The justices said the penalty would be disproportionate to the crime and was therefore forbidden as cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment. But they left open the question of whether child rapists might be sentenced to death.

There has not been an execution for rape in the United States since 1964, and no one has been executed for a crime that did not involve a killing since the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Before the Supreme Court suspended the death penalty in 1972, 16 states and the federal government authorized it for rape. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Death Row Inmates are Volunteering for Execution

From amnsety.org: Robert Comer, Christopher Newton and Elijah Page have something in common, aside from being on death row in the USA. Each of these three men is assisting their government in its efforts to kill them. They have given up their appeals and are "volunteering" for execution. Robert Comer is scheduled for execution in Arizona on 22 May 2007, Christopher Newton in Ohio on 23 May, and in the week of 9 July Elijah Page is due to become the first person to be put to death in South Dakota since 1947. In addition, on 4 May 2007, the Tennessee Attorney General requested an execution date for Daryl Holton, a former soldier with a history of depression, who has effectively waived his appeals and has been found competent to do so.

The execution of another "volunteer", Carey Dean Moore, due to be carried out in Nebraska on 8 May 2007, was stopped by the state Supreme Court on 2 May in view of concerns – not raised by Moore – about Nebraska’s use of the electric chair. In issuing its order, a divided Court noted that the "unique problem presented by this case is that Moore has not asked for a stay." It added, however, that "we simply are not permitted to avert our eyes from the fairness of a proceeding in which a defendant has received the death sentence", and that "we have authority to do all things that are reasonably necessary for the proper administration of justice".(2) It seems that not all courts have adopted such a view, and "volunteers" have gone to their deaths despite concerns about the fairness of proceedings that put them on death row or about the reliability of determinations that found them competent to waive their appeals.

About one in 10 of the men and women put to death in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977 had given up their appeals. Outside of the five main executing states of Texas, Virginia, Oklahoma, Missouri and Florida, this figure rises to one in five for the remaining 28 jurisdictions that have executed since 1977. Four of the first five executions in the USA after 1977 were of "volunteers". Put to death by firing squad, electrocution, and gas, perhaps their personal pursuit of execution made it easier for the USA to stomach a return to a punishment that much of the rest of the world was beginning to abandon. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

John Grisham Says the Death Penalty Should Be Abolished

From kansascity.com:The death penalty in the United States should be “abolished forever,” author John Grisham said Thursday in an interview with The Kansas City Star.

Grisham, whose books have sold more than 200 million copies worldwide, emphasized he was expressing his personal views.

But in a news conference before the interview, he said supporters of capital punishment should consider how problematic it is to administer. A moratorium should be imposed, the author said.

“I think the system is so badly flawed that all executions should be stopped,” Grisham said.

Grisham was in Kansas City to speak at a dinner benefit for the Midwestern Innocence Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing legal aid to prisoners “with persuasive actual innocence claims” in Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma and Arkansas. He said Thursday’s event would raise $100,000 for the cause.

Grisham discussed his recent nonfiction book, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, which chronicled the Oklahoma case that resulted in the wrongful convictions of former minor-league baseball player Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. Williamson was sentenced to die; Fritz got life in prison.

Both were exonerated after spending years in prison. Williamson died of cirrhosis in December 2004, five years after being freed. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

Amnesty Reports Number of Executions Fell Worldwide

From amnestyusa.org: The number of executions worldwide fell from 2,148 in 2005 to 1,591 in 2006, a drop of more than 25 percent, Amnesty International (AI) revealed today in its annual report on global death penalty statistics.

In 2006, 91 percent of all known executions took place in China, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, and the United States. AI recorded more than 1,000 executions in China in 2006, but figures on the use of the death penalty are a state secret in China and the true number is believed to be as high as 8,000. Iran executed at least 177 people, Pakistan at least 82, Iraq and Sudan each at least 65, and the United States 53.

In 1977, only 16 countries had abolished the death penalty for all crimes. In 2006, the Philippines became the latest country to join the 99 that have abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Many more, including South Korea, stand on the brink of abolition.

In Africa, only six countries carried out executions in 2006. Belarus is the only country that continues to use the death penalty in Europe. The United States is the only country in the Americas to have carried out any executions since 2003.

"2006 gave us cause to be optimistic about the prospect ultimately of global abolition," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA. "Around the world and here at home, there have been increasingly vocal calls to end the death penalty, and lawmakers are finally listening.

"However, it should be a continuing source of national shame that the United States remains on the list of the world's top executing countries. Amnesty International USA is doing its utmost to ensure that the United States is taken off the list of nations that retain the death penalty."

In 2006, New Jersey became the first state to institute a legislatively mandated moratorium on executions. Earlier this year, a New Jersey commission studying the administration of the death penalty recommended abolition. Several states have placed a hold on executions because of legal challenges and concerns relating to the lethal injection process. In the 2007 session, there were serious attempts at abolition in five state legislatures.

"Lawmakers are finally realizing that the death penalty is an ineffective crime prevention measure that drains resources away from the community and does little to deter violent crime," said Sue Gunawardena-Vaughn, director of Amnesty International USA's Program to Abolish the Death Penalty. "There is also a growing awareness of the racial bias, arbitrariness, and fallibility associated with the administration of the death penalty and many are seriously questioning the wisdom of retaining such a system." Rest of Release. . . [Mark Godsey]

Inmates Put To Death May Be Cruelly and Unusually Suffering

From orlandosentinel.com: Inmates put to death by lethal injection are supposed to die quickly and painlessly, but they actually might suffocate aware and in agony, a team of researchers concluded in a study released Monday.

In the report in the online publication "PloS Medicine," the eight-member team said the lethal drug cocktail used by dozens of states, including Florida, is flawed because the mixture doesn't necessarily work as intended.

"The reason that polls show most people support lethal injection is because they believe it is a humane medical procedure," said Teresa Zimmers, lead author of the study and a molecular biologist at the University of Miami's Leonard Miller School of Medicine. "We provide more evidence that it might be anything but. There's no question it's not a medical procedure. That is a sham."

Under the lethal-injection protocol, which Florida and most states copied from Oklahoma, three drugs are meant to work in combination to render inmates unconscious and then cause death by respiratory and cardiac arrest. Each drug is also supposed to be lethal on its own.

But the researchers, who analyzed drug dosages and the time between injection and death in 42 executions in North Carolina and eight in California, found that the first drug, an ultra-fast-acting barbiturate, might not be fatal or sufficient to keep inmates unconscious for the duration of their executions.

They also found that the third and final drug, potassium chloride, did not always induce cardiac arrest as intended. As a result, the researchers said, potentially aware inmates might die through painful asphyxiation induced by the second drug, pancuronium, which paralyzes the muscles. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

16 Exonerated Death Row Inmates, Barry Scheck, and Former TX Prosecutor Call for End of Penn. Executions

From DPIC.com: During a press conference near the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, 16 former death row inmates whose convictions were overturned joined noted attorney Barry Scheck and former Texas prosecutor Sam Millsap in calling for a moratorium on executions in Pennsylvania. Harold C. Wilson , the most recent of six death row exonerees in the state, noted that he spent 16 years on death row for a murder he did not commit. "If it had been up to the State of Pennsylvania, I would be dead today," Wilson told those who gathered to launch the Pennsylvania Moratorium Coalition, a group devoted to halting executions in the state while a review of capital punishment laws is conducted.

Wilson and fifteen other former death row inmates from around the country are part of Witness to Innocence, a group established by Sister Helen Prejean to assist wrongly convicted individuals who have been released from death row. They all signed a "Declaration of Innocence" as they urged lawmakers to halt executions.

Scheck, who heads the Innocence Project in New York City, stated that Pennsylvania has executed three men and freed six wrongly convicted men from death row since it reinstated capital punishment. "If the death penalty doesn't deter, if the death penalty is more expensive, and you have the risk of executing the innocent, is it a good policy? No," Scheck stated. Rest of Article. . . [Mark Godsey]

The Depravity Scale: Adding Method to Judging Criminal Depravity?

This NYTimes story focuses on t