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As clock ticks toward another Trump presidency, federal death row prisoners appeal for clemency

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President-elect Donald Trump’s return to office is putting a spotlight on the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, which houses federal death row. In Bloomington, a small community of death row spiritual advisors is struggling to support the prisoners to whom they minister.  Ross Martinie Eiler is a Mennonite, Episcopal lay minister and member of the Catholic Worker movement, which assists the homeless. And for the past three years, he’s served as a spiritual advisor for a man on federal death row.
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Appeals court stays Texas’ first scheduled 2021 execution

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The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Friday granted the stay for Blaine Milam, 31, to review intellectual disability claims.

He had been set for lethal injection on Thursday for killing his girlfriend’s 13-month-old daughter during what the couple had said was part of an “exorcism.” 

He was convicted of capital murder for the December 2008 slaying of Amora Carson at his trailer in Rusk County in East Texas.

Milam’s girlfriend, Jesseca Carson, was also convicted of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Prosecutors say Milam savagely beat, bit, strangled, and sexually mutilated the girl over a period of 30 hours.

Milam’s attorneys say 3 of 4 experts who examined him determined Milam is intellectually disabled. 

In its ruling, the appeals court ordered Milam’s claims of intellectual disability be reviewed by his trial court.

The U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 barred the execution of intellectually disabled people, but it has given states some discretion to decide how to determine such disabilities.

Source: The Associated Press, Staff, January 16, 2021


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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
Location: Texas, USA
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