Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Texas Death Penalty Blog

Criminal Law

: Texas Death Penalty Blog

No moratorium on the death penalty's flaws

By "Persian Cowboy"

The column below appeared in the August 27, 2008 edition of UT-Austin's Daily Texan newspaper.In 2007, the Supreme Court accepted a case from a Kentucky inmate challenging the constitutionality of lethal injections. This created a national moratorium on executions that lasted for more than seven months. Now, after the longest death penalty moratorium in 25 years, executions have resumed in the U.S. Georgia executed the first inmate, and Texas followed, executing eight more people. The next execution in Texas is scheduled for Sept. 9. Litigation that caused the moratorium did not question the death penalty itself but rather the manner in which it is carried out. This forest-for-the-trees approach, however, avoids a fundamental question: What did we learn during the seven-month-plus postponement? And how should what we learned influence us as we go forward?Arizona Judge Rudolph Gerber, who came to oppose the death penalty after serving on the state's appeals court, recently noted that the moratorium has had several ripple effects...continue to full post

Full post as published by Texas Death Penalty Blog on August 27, 2008 (boomark / email).