Death Penalty News

The arguments came in the case of Jack Greene, whose November execution was halted by the Arkansas Supreme Court Lawyers for the state of Arkansas argued Friday that the state prison director has long had the power to determine a death row inmate's sanity and that now isn't the time to change the way it moves the prisoners closer to their executions. The arguments came in the case of Jack Greene, whose November execution was halted by the Arkansas Supreme Court so it could review his attorneys' arguments that the state correction director, Wendy Kelley, should not be deciding whether he is competent enough to be executed. Greene's lawyers say doctors have found Greene delusional but Kelley has chosen to rely on outdated assessments of Greene's mental health in determining whether he's eligible to be executed. Greene's lawyers also have argued that Kelley shouldn't be making the determination because her boss, Gov. Asa Hutchinson, sets exec...

Criminal justice, education, environment, medicine—nothing was spared from the war on science. On a rainy day in April, 100,000 demonstrators—led by some of the nation’s most prominent scientists—converged on the National Mall for the first ever March for Science. It was Earth Day, and many of them were there to protest the environmental policies of a president who once insisted that global warming was a Chinese hoax. But climate change wasn’t the only thing on the marchers’ minds. Donald Trump, after all, has a history of making dangerously unscientific statements about everything from vaccines to criminal justice to football. Satellite marches took place across the country and around the world; organizers estimated that some 1.1 million people participated. Many politicians were apparently unimpressed. 2017 obviously wasn’t the first year to be plagued by public policy decisions that disregarded scientific facts, but the Trump era has taken this phenomenon to a whole new l...

(Reuters) - The Arkansas Supreme Court on Tuesday blocked the planned execution this week of a convicted killer who his lawyers argued is severely mentally ill and should not be put to death. Justices granted an emergency stay for Thursday’s execution of Jack Greene, 62, convicted in 1991 of the death of Sidney Burnett. The court released its decision without comment. Prosecutors said Greene inflicted a “macabre horror” on the 69-year-old retired minister, by beating him with a can of hominy, cutting him from mouth to ear and then shooting him twice. Greene’s public defenders sought the stay to allow the state Supreme Court more time to review a lower court’s decision to uphold an Arkansas law giving prison authorities the ability to determine a prisoner’s mental competence. Defense attorneys argued Greene was delusional and had brain damage. “The U.S Constitution prohibits the execution of prisoners with mental illness so severe that they lack a rational understandi...

Court documents show that one of the three drugs Arkansas planned to use in a lethal injection this week was made by a New York company that says it won't sell its products if it fears they'll be used in executions. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — One of the three drugs Arkansas planned to use in a lethal injection this week was made by a New York company that says it won't sell its products if it fears they'll be used in executions, court documents released Wednesday show. A package insert and drug label for the state's supply of midazolam released by the state in Pulaski County Circuit Court identifies Athenex as the maker of the drug, one of three used in Arkansas' lethal injection process. The insert was included as part of an affidavit filed by state Correction Department officials. The affidavit was filed the day after Pulaski County Circuit Judge Mackie Pierce ordered the Department of Correction to release a copy of the insert to Steven Shults, a...

NEW YORK — Three executions set for this week all demonstrate the irreparable failings of the death penalty, experts from Amnesty International USA said today. “Three states are set to put prisoners to death this week, and every single one of these cases raises disturbing questions about the fairness of the legal proceedings that put them on death row,” said Kristina Roth, senior program officer for criminal justice programs at Amnesty International USA. “These cases show that there is no justifiable way for the state to put a prisoner to death. The death penalty system is irrevocably broken and should be done away with for good.” Prisoners scheduled for execution this week are Patrick Hannon , who has been on death row in Florida for over 26 years, or more than half of his life. Hannon’s co-defendants received lighter sentences due in part to what two Florida Supreme Court judges attributed to ineffective counsel.  Hannon is scheduled to be put to death on Novem...

Jack Greene is set to be the first man executed in Arkansas since April, when Arkansas executed four inmates in an eight-day span. Even though Greene suffers from a severe mental illness, his execution for the 1991 murder of Sidney Burnett is scheduled for November 9. Scott Braden, one of his lawyers, said on Friday he is “exactly the kind of person our laws prohibit from execution.” In April, the state wanted to execute as many inmates as it could before its supply of the controversial sedative midazolam expired at the end of the month. The drug has been behind several botched executions in the last several years. The last man to be executed in Arkansas, Kenneth Williams, reportedly convulsed, jerked, and coughed for 10 to 20 seconds after officials administered the drug. In August, Arkansas secured more drugs after paying $250 in cash to an unknown source. (Prison officials do not have to reveal any details because they are protected by the state’s secrecy laws.) A few weeks l...

As Arkansas prepares to restart its death chamber several months after the state carried out its first executions in nearly 12 years, an order from the state's highest court to release more information about lethal injection drugs could throw an obstacle in its path. At the minimum, it may raise a new round of uncomfortable questions about how the state obtains its execution drugs. The state Supreme Court ruled last week that a 2015 law keeping secret the source of Arkansas' execution drugs doesn't extend to manufacturers, a decision that could force the state to release drug labels for its supply of a lethal injection drug early this week. It could undermine an approach Arkansas and at least a dozen other states have used to repel legal challenges by keeping secret how and where they obtain their drugs. The ruling came a week before the scheduled execution of Jack Greene, a convicted murderer scheduled to die Thursday. A state judge dismissed Greene's attemp...

An Arkansas death row inmate scheduled to be executed next week wants his head to be removed after his death and his brain to be examined by a doctor, his attorneys said. Jack Greene's last will and testament includes a request that his head be "surgically removed from my body and transported out of state to an independent medical examiner, such as Dr. Jan Garavaglia," a former medical examiner in Florida who had a reality television show. Garavaglia, reached by phone Friday, declined to comment on the request. Greene, 62, is scheduled to be executed on Thursday. He was sentenced to death for the 1991 murder of retired pastor Sidney Burnett — who had accused him of arson — days after he killed his own brother. Greene's attorneys say he suffers from severe mental illness and delusions. Greene claims in the will that the Arkansas Department of Corrections has caused him brain injuries and severe dementia, a connection he believes a medical examiner co...

Arkansas' highest court has ruled state prison officials must identify the manufacturer of one of the lethal injection drugs they plan to use to put a convicted murderer to death next week. LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — The Latest on Arkansas' planned execution of convicted murderer Jack Greene on Nov. 9 (all times local): 1:25 p.m. Arkansas' highest court has ruled state prison officials must identify the manufacturer of one of the lethal injection drugs they plan to use to put a convicted murderer to death next week. The state Supreme Court on Thursday upheld part of a lower court's ruling ordering the Department of Correction to release the labels for its supply of midazolam, one of three drugs Arkansas uses in its lethal injection process. The court said the labels must be released, but said a Pulaski County judge must determine what identifying information other than the manufacturer can be withheld. A Pulaski County judge in September ordered the...

A cadre of mental-health professionals, including 24 who practice in Arkansas, signed a letter delivered to Gov. Asa Hutchinson on Wednesday, pleading that he stop the upcoming execution of Jack Greene. Later in the day, Hutchinson also was sent a letter from American Bar Association President Hilarie Bass, who expressed concerns that carrying out the execution would be contrary to the group's stance against executing the mentally ill. Greene's attorneys say Greene is delusional. Greene, 62, is the oldest prisoner on Arkansas' death row, having been condemned to die in 1992 for beating retired Johnson County minister Sidney Burnett and then fatally shooting him inside Burnett's home. At the time, Greene was on the run after killing his brother in North Carolina. His execution by lethal injection is set for Nov. 9. For more than a decade, Greene has been housed behind a solid metal door, his federal public defenders wrote in a recent filing seeking to halt...