Death Penalty News

Idaho U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill has ruled in favor of death-row-prisoner Gerald Pizzuto, indefinitely pausing his March 2023 execution date, and granting him a hearing in his claim that the state of Idaho violates his Constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment by repeatedly scheduling execution dates while knowing the state does not have the means to carry it out. “As Pizzuto describes it,” Judge Winmill wrote, “defendants’ repeated rescheduling of his execution is like dry firing in a mock execution or a game of Russian roulette… With each new death warrant comes another spin of the revolver’s cylinder, restarting the 30-day countdown until the trigger pulls. Not knowing whether a round is chambered, Pizzuto must relive his last days in a delirium of uncertainty until the click sounds and the cylinder spins again.”

Last December, Christopher Dunn asked the United States Supreme Court to order his release from prison or at least grant him a new trial. He is serving a life sentence in Missouri for a crime he did not commit, and he is hoping the court will agree to take up his case this spring. Dunn contends that the U.S. Constitution forbids punishing innocent people and is asking the justices to declare that it is unconstitutional for a state to keep an innocent man in prison. A court in Missouri now agrees that he is not guilty. But Dunn is caught up in a nightmarish legal thicket. It is time for the Supreme Court to end his nightmare and say that this country will not tolerate punishing the innocent. Dunn was convicted and sentenced to life in prison plus 90 years for the 1990 slaying of Recco Rodgers, a teenager who was shot while visiting a friend in in the Wells-Goodfellow neighborhood of St. Louis. According to a report in the New Republic , “(T)he sound of gunfire was common in Wells-Goo...

Take a look back at everything that led to the fateful, controversial execution. Tuesday marked the 10-year point since the state of Georgia executed Troy Davis despite increasing suspicions of his innocence following his conviction for killing an off-duty police officer. Davis denied committing the murder throughout his prison sentence and up until he was literally on his deathbed when he sat up on the gurney to which he was strapped and looked the family of Savannah Police Officer Mark MacPhail in their eyes to repeat claims of his innocence in the 1989 killing. “I did not have a gun,” he told them before turning his attention to his soon-to-be executioners. “For those about to take my life,” Davis said to prison officials, “may God have mercy on your souls. May God bless your souls.” But according to the transcript from audio of Davis’ last moments alive, his final words were, “continue to fight this fight,” a message to his supporters and death penalty opponents who unsuccessfully ...

Florida’s new conservative Supreme Court takes on its former self and the U.S. Supreme Court in death row cases There has been a real lack of “judicial restraint” lately in Florida. You may have heard this term, usually by those who decry “activist judges” for “legislating from the bench.” Unelected judges must be restrained from usurping the roles of elected representatives in the other two branches. That’s how the argument goes. But it’s usually the banner waved by its most egregious violators. Here’s an example close to home. In 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case styled Atkins v. Virginia , made a landmark ruling that the Eighth Amendment’s ban against cruel and unusual punishment prohibits states from executing mentally disabled inmates. The 6-3 decision, with the majority opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, gave the states the authority to come up with a determination of mental disability. RELATED |  The Florida Supreme Court’s...

Justice John Paul Stevens struck an important blow against the modern death penalty 17 years ago in a Supreme Court decision barring capital punishment for intellectually disabled people. In his majority opinion in Atkins v. Virginia , Justice Stevens said the “cognitive and behavioral impairments” of the intellectually disabled made them “less morally culpable” and put them at “special risk of wrongful conviction.” Those defendants, he warned, would be more prone to give false confessions and less capable of helping their lawyers mount a strong defense. It was a step toward greater humanity in the law from a justice who joined the court as a supporter of capital punishment but who came to believe that it had failed in practice and should be outlawed. His willingness to wrestle publicly with this deep and divisive question, and to shift his views, was rare for any judge, let alone a Supreme Court justice. But Justice Stevens, who died Tuesday at age 99 from complications...

Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who was appointed by President Gerald Ford in 1975 as a moderate but later became a leading liberal voice, has died, the Supreme Court said Tuesday. He was 99. The cause of death was complications from a stroke he suffered on Monday, the Supreme Court said.  His daughters were by his side at the time of his death.  "He brought to our bench an inimitable blend of kindness, humility, wisdom, and independence. His unrelenting commitment to justice has left us a better nation," said Chief Justice John Roberts in a statement.  Stevens served on the Supreme Court until he retired at the age of 90 in 2010. Upon his retirement, former President Obama praised him as an "impartial guardian of the law" who served the nation with "honor and humility." Mr. Obama said at the time he wanted to appoint a justice who possessed, like Stevens, "an independent mind, a record of excellence and integrity, ...

Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is quoted as saying that Brett Kavanaugh shouldn't be confirmed to the high court because of Kavanaugh's potential political bias. It's rare for a retired justice to weigh in on a pending nomination. The Palm Beach Post reports that Stevens, in remarks to a group of retirees in Florida, suggested Kavanaugh lacked the temperament for the lifetime appointment. Stevens, who's praised Kavanaugh before, says he's changed his mind about Kavanaugh for reasons unrelated to Kavanaugh's "intellectual ability." Stevens is quoted as saying, "I feel his performance in the hearings ultimately changed my mind." He says commentators have argued that Kavanaugh's Senate testimony last week showed a potential for political bias. And the newspaper says Stevens says he thinks "there's merit to that criticism and I think the senators should really pay attention that." ...

New York (CNN) -- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she hopes to stay on the Supreme Court until the age of 90. "I'm now 85," Ginsburg said on Sunday. "My senior colleague, Justice John Paul Stevens, he stepped down when he was 90, so think I have about at least five more years." She has already hired law clerks for at least two more terms. Ginsburg spoke in New York following a production of "The Originalist," a play about the late Justice Antonin Scalia, at the 59E59 Theater. "If I had my choice of dissenters when I was writing for the court, it would be Justice Scalia," Ginsburg said, saying that the back and forth would help her form her arguments. "Sometimes it was like a ping-pong game." As a result, Ginsburg said, her landmark decision opening up the Virginia Military Institute to female cadets was her 18th draft. Asked by "The Originalist" Director Molly Smith what keeps her "hopeful,...

Rarely in my lifetime have I seen the type of civic engagement schoolchildren and their supporters demonstrated in Washington and other major cities throughout the country this past Saturday. These demonstrations demand our respect. They reveal the broad public support for legislation to minimize the risk of mass killings of schoolchildren and others in our society. That support is a clear sign to lawmakers to enact legislation prohibiting civilian ownership of semiautomatic weapons, increasing the minimum age to buy a gun from 18 to 21 years old, and establishing more comprehensive background checks on all purchasers of firearms. But the demonstrators should seek more effective and more lasting reform. They should demand a repeal of the Second Amendment. Concern that a national standing army might pose a threat to the security of the separate states led to the adoption of that amendment, which provides that “a well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a fre...

Will the U.S. Supreme Court add the fate of the death penalty to a term already fraught with hot-button issues like partisan gerrymandering, warrantless surveillance, and a host of contentious First Amendment disputes? That’s the hope of an ambitious Supreme Court petition seeking to abolish the ultimate punishment. But it runs headlong into the fact that only two justices have squarely called for a reexamination of the death penalty’s constitutionality. Abel Hidalgo challenges Arizona’s capital punishment system—which sweeps too broadly, he says, because the state’s “aggravating factors” make 99 percent of first-degree murderers death-eligible—as well as the death penalty itself, arguing it’s cruel and unusual punishment. He’s represented by former acting U.S. Solicitor General Neal Katyal—among the most successful Supreme Court practitioners last term. Hidalgo also has the support of several outside groups who filed amicus briefs on his behalf, notably one from a group...