Georgia will kill a man tonight. When it injects poison into the veins of William Earl Lynd, Georgia will end the longest period of time between executions since Furman v. Georgia.
A lot has happened since September 25, 2007, when Texas killed Michael Richard. There were many lessons to learn while we shut down the machinery of death. In fact, Richard's execution caused some controversy. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari in the case of Baze v. Rees which started this de facto moratorium. Richard's lawyers tried to get a stay based on the Supreme Court hearing. Unfortunately, their computers had problems and they would not be able to file to necessary paperwork by 5:00 pm. When Richard's attorneys called the court to ask for 20 more minutes, the Hon. Sharon Keller, Chief Judge of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, told the lawyers the courthouse closes at 5:00 p.m. Richard was dead three hours later. We should have learned that there is an inherent cruelty in a system that can't wait for 20 minutes for a person to get access to the courts.
In the case of Snyder v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a trial judge in a Louisiana court allowed a prosecutor to strike a black juror, leaving an all-white jury to consider the fate of a black defendant in a capital trial. In the 7
The ACLU National Prison Project has filed suit in Nevada because the abhorrent medical care at Ely State Prison. This prison houses all of Nevada's death row inmates. Ten of the last 12 people executed in Nevada waived their rights to appeal and "volunteered" to die. It is likely that the lack of medical care at the facility is directly connected to th
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in Baze v. Rees, a Kentucky death row inmate's challenge to the state's lethal injection protocol. Kentucky uses a three drug cocktail that is used in virtually all capital punishment jurisdictions.
The Ohio Supreme Court will allow a judge to hold a hearing on the constitutionality of the state's lethal injection law. Previously, the state sued to prevent Judge James Burge from holding a hearing about the state's lethal injection process. The Department of Rehabilitation and Correction will now h
On October 24, 2007, at a hearing before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Brian Stull of the ACLU Capital Punishment Project will argue on behalf of Max Soffar, an innocent man on Texas's death row. The CPP, with the Texas Innocence Network (TIN), will try to overturn Soffar's conviction in the capital murder case of four v
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently completed an extensive four-part series called "A Matter of Life or Death," about the death penalty in Georgia. The series discussed arbitrariness in the use of the death penalty, the fact that race and geography often determines who receives a death sentence, and whether or not the sys
Kenneth Foster Jr. was scheduled to be executed yesterday for a murder he did not commit or intend to commit. But in a remarkable turn of events, Texas Governor Rick Perry did something he rarely does: he commuted Foster's death sentence. In fact, Foster's is the only sentence he has commuted voluntari
