Yesterday, the New York Senate voted to pass “Brittany’s Law,” to create a new public registry of offenders. Think “sex offender” registry, only for anyone convicted of any violent felony. People with a conviction in their past would have to register for ten years or more (under penalty of another...
Last year, we posted an analysis of capital punishment as practiced in the U.S., and concluded that it ought to be scrapped. Not for the usual “killing is wrong” or “what about the innocent” reasons, but because as practiced it fails to serve the purposes of punishment. It doesn’t deter...
A year and eight days ago, the Supreme Court took the unusual step of granting an “original writ,” and handed down a novel decision directing a federal court to revisit the murder conviction of Troy Anthony Davis by allowing Davis to put on evidence of actual innocence. (See our...
The Chief was at it again. Everyone had their theories. J.P. said the Chief had lost it, gone soft in the head. Nino thought he was just having fun. Sam didn’t say anything, so he was probably in on it. None of us thought it made any sense, though. Except...
The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates By John Temple 2009 University Press of Mississippi, 234 pages, $25.95 Amazon.com :: Barnes & Noble The world is loaded with books about criminal lawyers. They fill the shelves in the mystery and thriller aisles, dominate true crime and related...
Without much media fanfare, the Supreme Court has already decided two capital-punishment cases this month. The first, Bobby v. Van Hook, came down on the 9th, and dealt with a case from early 1985. Nearly 25 years ago, Van Hook went looking for someone to rob, trolled a Cincinnati gay...
While the boys were still alive, they were chained to the engine block of an old Jeep, and to pieces of railroad track. Then the Klansmen dumped the boys in the river, where they drowned. One of the Klansmen later reported that Seale “would have shot them first, but didn’t want to get blood all over the boat.”
The boys were killed because they were black, and because Seale thought they might have been civil-rights workers.
In a unanimous decision today, the Supreme Court held that the Double Jeopardy Clause doesn’t prevent Ohio from re-litigating a capital defendant’s mental retardation, after the state’s highest court had opined that he had “mild to borderline” mental retardation. The case is unique, in that the defendant was sentenced to...
The Supreme Court this morning exemplified exactly what’s wrong with the death penalty in this country. In a clear effort to avoid a decision that would impose a death sentence, the Court made a nonsense ruling so it could extend the course of appeals — appeals that have already run...
In an unusually mixed decision for the consensus-driven Roberts Court, the Supreme Court today ruled that federal public defenders can represent death-penalty clients at state clemency hearings. The more liberal justices said federal defenders could do so, but only if the state hearings followed a federal proceeding. Justice Thomas went...
Few would deny that 32 years is a long time to spend in jail. It’s a long time to spend on death row, as well. But is delaying the execution — particularly when the delay is caused by the convict’s own appeals — cruel and unusual punishment violating the 8th...
Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, has suggested to the Washington Post that the Supreme Court may be getting ready to review “whether the death penalty is applied in a discriminatory discriminatory way, an issue the Court has not taken up for two decades.” Dieter drew...
Richard Cooey was executed by lethal injection this morning, after the Supreme Court denied without comment his final appeal. He had claimed that lethal injection could cause a painful death. The Court declined to address the issue, and simply denied a stay of execution. Yesterday, the Supreme Court rejected without...
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