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Criminal Law

Capital Defense Weekly

Covering Capital Defense
By Karl R. Keys, Esq.

Post Frequency: 17.8/day

Last Entry: March 28, 2011 at 23:29:51

This week?s email edition is out.

Posted on July 20, 2009
This week?s email edition is out. From the intro. Leading off this edition is the stay issued by the United States Supreme Court in Paul Powell v. Kelly. The case involves application of the Double Jeopardy Clause to findings of aggravating circumstances in a capital case...

California Supreme Court rules in Friend

Posted on July 20, 2009
File under, “And I was making the same point last week at work….” via Shaun Martin: Sometimes it’s totally easy to see why a defendant has been sentenced to death, and it’s obvious how the murder there is different from other crimes in which the defendant is sentenced to life...

Still sorting wheat and chaff

Posted on July 19, 2009
This week’s email edition will go out late Monday as Lexis & Westlaw are both missing major cases and hand-checking the various major states is an arduous process. Here’s what we’ve found so far. Note the CAAFLog is reporting Pvt...

fl remand

Posted on July 17, 2009
The Florida Supreme Court has remanded in Leonardo Franqui v. State, SCSC05-830, on an Atkins claim: Having reviewed the record in this case, including prior proceedings, we reverse the summary denial of Franqui?s claim for mental retardation and temporarily relinquish jurisdiction to the circuit court for ninety days for an evidentiary hearing to be held on [...

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NC RJA advances

Posted on July 15, 2009
via Death Watch: The Racial Justice Act passed its final reading in the North Carolina House of Representatives by a vote of 61 to 53. Due to differences between the House and Senate versions of the bill, it will now go back to the Senate, which can either agree to the House version or convene a [...

Ohio kills

Posted on July 14, 2009
via AP: Forty-five-year-old John Fautenberry of Oregon was pronounced dead at 10:37 a.m. at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility here. Fautenberry was sentenced to death for the slaying of Joseph Daron Jr., who picked him up while he was hitchhiking on Feb...

weekly edition

Posted on July 13, 2009
now available: Leading off this edition is Herman Lindsey v. State. In Lindsey the Florida Supreme Court ruled 7-0 insufficient evidence existed to find Herman Lindsey killed the victim. The State’s case was based completely on circumstantial evidence...

oopsie part deux

Posted on July 13, 2009
via Radley: Thanks to the work of Northwestern University Law School?s death penalty clinic, another man wrongly convicted of murder walked free this week. Ronald Kitchen spent 13 of his 21 years behind bars on death row. He?s also another case of someone who falsely confessed to a murder after intense questioning from police interrogators...

rumour of a temporary stay

Posted on July 13, 2009
There is a purported stay of the execution for Kenneth Mosley (Texas). The x-date will be reset for no earlier than mid-August.

VA stay

Posted on July 13, 2009
A stay is reported in Virginia. via WaPo: The U.S. Supreme Court today stayed the execution of Paul Warner Powell, a Virginia man who killed a 16-year-old Manassas girl 10 years ago and was scheduled to die tomorrow night.. . . The Virginia Supreme Court overturned Powell’s first capital conviction, but Powell then wrote a boastful letter [...

acquittal in Florida

Posted on July 12, 2009
The Florida Supreme Court in Herman Lindsey v. State, SC07-1167, on Thursday entered a judgment of acquittal as the State failed to prove this circumstantial case beyond a reasonable doubt. In light of a large number of cases this week to still sift through, the weekly email edition will run Monday night, however, the working copy [...

PA legislative development

Posted on July 09, 2009
AP notes that , the Pennsylvania General Assembly has finally passed a responste to Atkins: The Senate voted 45-2 to approve a bill that would establish a pretrial process to determine whether a defendant potentially facing the death penalty is mentally retarded...

geography and death

Posted on July 09, 2009
The director of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project writes, “Sentenced To Death Because Of Where You Live: The Death Penalty?s Geographic Bias,” at the ACLU Blog of Rights. Americans have become increasingly troubled by the profound flaws in our capital punishment system, including its astonishing error rate and its racial and socioeconomic biases...

Okla kills

Posted on July 09, 2009
via wires: A man convicted of the 1995 shooting deaths of two campers has been put to death in Oklahoma.Thirty-two-year-old Michael P. DeLozier was pronounced dead at 6:10 p.m. Thursday. DeLozier was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the slayings of 60-year-old Orville Lewis Bullard and 54-year-old Paul Steven Morgan...

scheduling issues

Posted on July 05, 2009
I’m in trial this week with a locally high profile sentencning to boot. Some hope the email edition will be out midweek.

DNA testing sought in Ohio

Posted on June 30, 2009
The Ohio Innocence Project is seeking to have the Ohio Supreme Court consider a DNA challenge asserting that Kevin Keith did not kill three people, including a 7-year-old girl, in 1994 that laded him on death row. More here.

Oklahoma clemency denied

Posted on June 30, 2009
The Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board voted unanimously Monday to deny clemency to Michael DeLozier for killing two campers in southern Oklahoma nearly 14 years ago. More here.

notable SCOTUS inaction

Posted on June 29, 2009
The US Supreme Court has adjourned for the summer. The Court will take NO action in In Re Troy Anthony Davis, Mr. Davis’ petition for habeas corpus, until the Supreme Court reconvenes in September. Additionally, the Court has still not acted on the warden’s cert...

email edition

Posted on June 22, 2009
from this week’s edition: Leading off this edition is the Supreme Court’s decision in District Attorney’s Office for Third Judicial Dist. v. Osborne. The Court 5-4, the Court holds that Alaska has an adequate process for granting DNA testing and hence relief can not be had in a free-standing § 1983 action to compel DNA testing...

2nd Cir denies rehearing en banc in Fell v. United States

Posted on June 18, 2009
via How Appealing: Second Circuit denies rehearing en banc of ruling that affirmed a federal death sentence imposed by a jury in Vermont, a State that lacks a death penalty: Today’s order denying rehearing en banc was accompanied by a concurring opinion and three separate dissenting opinions...

interesting little second petition discussion

Posted on June 17, 2009
The Fifth Circuit in Humberto Leal Garcia v Quartermanoffers up an odd little decision on second habeas petitions vs. successors. Leal is a foreign national on death row in Texas. Post-Avena but pre-Medellin Leal exhausted a Vienna Convention right claim and filed a habeas petition in federal court...

missed another one

Posted on June 16, 2009
Thanks to the helpful reader who tipped us off to the Arizona Supreme Court’s holding in Ryan John Chronis v. Steinle, No. CV-08-0394-SA Arizona Rule of Criminal Procedure 13.5(c) allows a defendant in a capital case to request a probable cause determination for alleged aggravating circumstances...

of course….

Posted on June 14, 2009
Shortly after sending out a note that this week’s email edition wouldn’t run due to a lack of published cases I noted this at Prof. Doug’s blog. Howard Bashman, always more reliable than the database services, noted thatFriday the Eleventh Circuit did in fact publish a death penalty opinion the database services just haven’t found [...

not running

Posted on June 14, 2009
A “full edition” of the weekly isn’t running for a fairly unusual reason, Lexis & FindLaw are showing no reported capital cases from any of federal circuits or state appellate courts. The lack of published opinions means we aren’t running The only notable unpublished cases comes from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on [...

commenting on California’s proposed lethal injection protocol

Posted on June 10, 2009
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has proffered written new lethal injection regs and is seeking comment. Access the proposed regulations here. California law requires all germane comments to be reviewed and kept on file. Comments should reference ?Proposed Amendments to Title 15, Article 7...

CCA grants sentencing relief

Posted on June 10, 2009
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday granted penalty phase relief in Ex parte Timothy Cockrell: The convicting court held a live evidentiary hearing and entered findings of fact and conclusions of law. Initially, the court found that applicant failed to establish by a preponderance of the evidence that he has significantly subaverage general [...

Sister Helen hits the small screen

Posted on June 10, 2009
From friends at CatholicTV: On Friday , June 12th , Sr. Helen Prejean , CSJ will appear on the CatholicTV talk show ?This is the Day? as an in-studio guest. Sr. Helen is the author of the book ?Dead Man Walking? , which inspired the film of the same name starring Sean Penn and Susan [...

in other news….

Posted on June 09, 2009
News we mssed from around the media: Adam Liptak examines the background behind how Holly Wood ended up on Alabama’s death row and why the Supreme Court now wants to review that too. IDB examines Sotomayor Vs. The Death Penalty The New Hampshire Senate has approved studying the state’s death penalty law...

Updated CLE’s

Posted on June 07, 2009
We’ve updated the CLE section in the column to the right. Obviously many, many germane CLEs are missing. Please email us to let us know.

New spam filter

Posted on June 07, 2009
A new spam filter has been added. Your first post has to be moderated, after that your good to go.

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