Death Penalty News

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — An Alabama judge accused of violating judicial rules with her opposition to the death penalty went on trial Monday on ethics charges that could result in her removal from office. Jefferson County Circuit Judge Tracie Todd , who was suspended with pay after investigators accused her of wrongdoing in April, became embroiled in the debate over capital punishment and issued erroneous decisions that violated orders by higher courts, according to charges filed with the Court of the Judiciary, which hears complaints against state judges. Todd, who ruled the state’s capital punishment law unconstitutional five years ago, made public comments and took actions that showed she was improperly embroiled in the issue and lacked the “detachment and neutrality” required of a judge, alleged the Judicial Inquiry Commission, which investigates complaints and files charges. “Judge Todd abandoned her judicial role to become an advocate,” commission attorney Elizabeth Bern told the n...

Finding “brazen misconduct” by a prosecutor who withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense and then secretly served as the trial judge’s law clerk in the case, a Midland County, Texas judge has recommended that death-row prisoner Clinton Young be granted a new trial. In a 30-page factfinding order issued on April 26, 2021, Senior Judge Sid Harle excoriated former assistant district attorney Ralph Petty and the Midland County District Attorney’s office for “shocking prosecutorial misconduct that destroyed any semblance of a fair trial” in Young’s case. That conduct, which Harle said was known to at least 2 senior members of the District Attorney’s office, included serving as part of the prosecution team that tried Young for murder and defended his conviction and death sentence on appeal while simultaneously acting as judicial clerk and legal adviser for the judge who was presiding over the trial and subsequent appeals in the trial court. Harle said that Petty violated Young’s due pr...

More than 300 tiny pieces of human tissue from prisoners executed by the Nazis have been buried in Berlin. The samples were found in microscopic slides at a property that belonged to Hermann Stieve - an anatomy professor at the Charité university hospital. Heirs of the doctor, who died in 1952, discovered the collection in 2016. Researchers say Stieve systematically collaborated with the Nazis to receive the bodies of 184 people, mostly women, executed for political resistance. The tissue pieces - most less than a millimetre long - were discovered at Stieve's estate, stored in small black boxes, including some labelled with names. Once found, they were handed to Berlin's Charité university hospital, who tasked staff at the German Resistance Memorial Center (GDW) to research their history. RELATED | Stieve's List: The lost victims of Nazi experiments The burial ceremony on Monday took place at Berlin's Dorotheenstadt Cemetery. The grave is n...