Criminal Law

High Court Sends Back Abu-Jamal Death Penalty Case

Posted on January 20, 2010
The Supreme Court on Tuesday threw out a court ruling that invalidated a former Black Panther's death sentence for killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981, one of two rulings it issued that reversed actions by lower courts. The first move was the latest twist in Mumia Abu-Jamal's racially tinged case that has drawn international attention...

Legislative panel to review Kansas death penalty

Posted on January 18, 2010
The Associated PressTOPEKA | Legislators have scheduled hearings this week to review the cost and effectiveness of Kansas' death penalty law.The Senate Judiciary Committee begins its work Tuesday.A bill was debated last year that would have prevented new death sentences after July 1, 2009, but the bill was sent back to committee for more work...

Death penalty repeal stalls

Posted on January 13, 2010
BY TIM CARPENTERCreated March 16, 2009 at 1:48pmUpdated March 16, 2009 at 10:15pmBill sent back to committee after three-hour Senate debateA bill repealing the death penalty in Kansas was shoved back into a Senate committee Monday after a three-hour debate that left proponents and opponents of capital punishment unsatisfied...

Case 2:04-cv-01156- GLF-MRA Document 594

Posted on January 10, 2010
Case 2:04-cv-01156- GLF-MRA Document 594 Filed 10/23/09 Page 1 of 4UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO EASTERN DIVISION RICHARD COOEY, et al., Plaintiffs Case No. 2:04-cv-1156 JUDGE GREGORY FROST v. Magistrate Judge Mark R...

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Filings Reveal Details About Ohio Executioners

Posted on January 10, 2010
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESSFiled at 4:31 p.m. ETA pair of court filings Friday challenging Ohio's execution process provided additional details about the state's executioners, whose names are not released by the state. The team members gave anonymous court depositions in October that are sealed and not available for public review...

Improper preparation, undertraining before failed execution, say lawyers

Posted on January 10, 2010
By Andrew Welsh-HugginsThe Associated PressPosted Jan 10, 2010 @ 04:25 PMCOLUMBUS ?One of the executioners involved in last year?s botched attempt to put a man to death was under-trained and failed to attend all the required rehearsals for the Sept. 15 execution, lawyers said in court filings...

Richard Dieter "2009 Death Penalty Info Center Report"

Posted on January 09, 2010
Richard Dieter "2009 Death Penalty Info Center Report"http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9if4Lt_bzwThe Death Penalty Information Center released its "The Death Penalty in 2009: Year End Report on December 18, noting that the country is expected to finish 2009 with the fewest death sentences sinc...

TN court could settle limbo concerning executed man's autopsy

Posted on January 08, 2010
Inmate Cecil Johnson's religious beliefs are pitted against state studyBy Clay CareyTHE TENNESSEANCecil Johnson Jr. did not want coroners examining his body after he was executed Dec. 2. Because of his religious beliefs, the death row inmate said he did not want an autopsy ? just an immediate funeral and burial at a cemetery in Las Vegas...

Death penalty loses legitimacy as top lawyers distance themselves

Posted on January 08, 2010
By: Editorial BoardLawyers think no problem has been invented that they can?t puzzle through, solve or argue their way out of.So, there?s reason to pause when they throw up their hands and walk away from a fight. That?s what the nation?s pre-eminent group of legal scholars and practitioners has done with capital punishment...

Linda Carty faces execution after losing appeal

Posted on January 02, 2010
Linda Carty, a British citizen on Death Row in Texas, USA, could be executed within months after having her September 2009 appeal rejected. She only now has recourse to a Supreme Court Appeal. The Fifth Circuit court in New Orleans conceded that Carty received an inadequate defence at her murder trial in 2002 but refused to reverse the jury?s decision...

Ketchum: Poor economy strikes blow at death penalty

Posted on January 02, 2010
Hard times may be accomplishing what some religious organizations have been trying to do for many years: end the death penalty.And to think, they could have done it just by making the economy collapse.A recent report shows maintaining the capital-punishment system probably is one of the most inefficient ways to spend law-enforcement dollars...

China has made a mockery of justice

Posted on January 02, 2010
The case made by China in the execution of Akmal Shaikh undermines its claim to have a rational drugs policyClive Stafford Smithguardian.co.uk, Tuesday 29 December 2009 11.00 GMTIn the wake of Akmal Shaikh's horrific execution, it is perhaps worth discussing the position taken by the Chinese in more depth...

The uneven hand of justice in TN murders

Posted on January 01, 2010
Comparison of similar crimes leaves you wondering: Why is Gaile Owens facing execution?By John SeigenthalerThere was no obvious link between the two recent national headlines.One said: "Woman who killed preacher husband gets custody of their three children...

US Death Sentences in 2009 Lowest in Decades

Posted on December 20, 2009
Washington - The number of death sentences in the US this year dropped to the lowest number in 33 years, according to a report released Friday by the Death Penalty Information Center.US courts meted out 106 death sentences in 2009, down from the highest number of 328 death sentences given out by judges in 1994...

Legislature to consider end to death penalty

Posted on December 20, 2009
BY RON SYLVESTERThe Wichita EagleKansas will consider abolishing the death penalty next year as death sentences are declining across the United States.Fewer people were sentenced to death this year than any other year since 1976, according to a report released Friday by the Death Penalty Information Center...

California's death row grows as death sentences decline nationwide

Posted on December 19, 2009
Although the state's lethal injection table has been idle for the last four years because of legal challenges, California continues to hand down death sentences.In Los Angeles County alone, 13 convicted murderers were condemned, contributing to the state's 2009 total of 29, according to a national report...

US executions down by half over past decade: report

Posted on December 18, 2009
WASHINGTON ? The United States executed one convict a week in 2009, but the rate is down by half compared to a decade ago, according to an annual report from the Death Penalty Information Center.The 2009 total is up from 37 executions in 2008, but in that year application of the death penalty was suspended for four months while the Supreme Court considered and ultimately upheld the constitutionality of lethal injections...

Updated: Bradshaw jury deliberations end for tonight

Posted on December 16, 2009
December 15, 2009By Jennifer PortmanDEMOCRAT senior WRITER10 p.m.Jurors have decided to break for the night. They will be sequestered at a hotel and deliberations will resume at 9 a.m. tomorrow.9:30 p.m.Jurors are being told that if they wish, they may break for tonight, stay in a hotel and continue deliberations in at 9 a...

UN human rights chief calls for universal abolition of the death penalty

Posted on December 15, 2009
15 December 2009 ? The top United Nations human rights official today called for the universal abolition of the death penalty, citing a host of reasons ranging from the fundamental right to life to the possibility of judicial errors. ?I am opposed to the death penalty in all cases,? UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a message marking the on 20th anniversary of the Death Penalty Optional Protocol which was added to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1989 with the aim of abolishing the punishment...

D?Alemberte Petitions for Innocence Commission

Posted on December 14, 2009
Former American Bar Association President and prominent Tallahassee lawyer Sandy D?Alemberte filed a petition with the Florida Supreme Court Friday asking it to establish a commission to investigate how wrongful convictions occur...

NORTH CAROLINA: Many factors point to injustice of the death penalty in NC

Posted on December 12, 2009
The North Carolina Racial Justice Act was a step in the right direction towards redressing the unfairness in our system of capital punishment. It is time we end all-white juries and disparate sentencing of people of color relative to their white counterparts...

Addison trial cost state nearly $3m

Posted on December 09, 2009
By KEVIN LANDRIGAN Staff WriterThe taxpayer cost to prosecute, defend and sentence William ?Stix? Addison for the October 2007 murder of a Manchester police officer has reached nearly $3 million and will grow by half a million dollars a year while he appeals the verdict...

Ky. to stick with 3-drug execution protocol

Posted on December 09, 2009
By BRETT BARROUQUEREAssociated Press WriterKentucky plans to keep using a three-drug cocktail on death row inmates and won't use Ohio's novel one-drug overdose method, as officials work through legal hurdles so executions can resume in the state.Kentucky Justice and Public Safety Cabinet spokeswoman Jennifer Brislin told The Associated Press on Monday that the current protocol will be put through public hearings as the state seeks to comply with a Kentucky Supreme Court ruling...

Ohio to switch execution mode

Posted on December 09, 2009
ASSOCIATED PRESSCOLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) | Condemned killer Kenneth Biros could become the first person in the country put to death with a single dose of an intravenous anesthetic instead of the usual, faster-acting three-drug process if his execution proceeds Tuesday...

Stay Denied on Ohio One-Drug Execution

Posted on December 09, 2009
December 7, 2009 9:09 AM | Posted by Kent Scheidegger | 1 Comment | No TrackBacksAs noted in Friday's Blog Scan, the Sixth Circuit on that day denied rehearing en banc to the challenge to Ohio's since-abandoned three-drug method of execution. That controversy is moot, and the court noted that the new one-drug method was not before it...

New Execution Method Is Used in Ohio

Posted on December 09, 2009
Saying he was now ?paroled to my Father in heaven,? a convicted killer in Ohio on Tuesday became the first person in the United States to be executed with a one-drug intravenous lethal injection.The new method, which involved a large dose of anesthetic, akin to how animals are euthanized, has been hailed by most experts as painless and an improvement over the three-drug cocktail used in all other states that employ lethal injection, but it is unlikely to settle the debate over the death penalty...

Ohio executes inmate with one-drug injection

Posted on December 09, 2009
LUCASVILLE, Ohio ? An Ohio killer was put to death in an efficient 10 minutes Tuesday in the first U.S. execution to use a single drug injection instead of the standard three-chemical combination that has come under legal attack because it can cause excruciating pain...

Neb. lethal-injection plan advances

Posted on December 09, 2009
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- A proposed lethal-injection protocol in Nebraska has been submitted to Attorney General Jon Bruning for approval. Last week, the state Department of Correctional Services signed off on the three-drug cocktail and the process of administering it to death-row inmates...

New execution method unlikely to gain traction in California

Posted on December 09, 2009
The state would face numerous procedural hurdles in carrying out capital punishment as in Ohio, which put a murderer to death with single-drug lethal injection.An Ohio murderer put to death with the nation's first single-drug lethal injection died swiftly Tuesday, inaugurating an execution method some analysts consider more humane than the three-drug procedure used in California and 33 other states...

Picked From a Lineup, on a Whiff of Evidence

Posted on December 09, 2009
HOUSTON ? A dog?s sniff helped put Curvis Bickham in jail for eight months. Now that the case against him has been dropped, he wants to tell the world that the investigative technique that justified his arrest smells to high heaven.The police told Mr...

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