Death Penalty News

Republican lawmakers took another step Monday night towards reinstating the death penalty in New Mexico. Members of the House Finance and Appropriations Committee voted 8-6 along party lines to send the capital punishment legislation to a vote of the full 70-member House of Representatives. House Bill 7 would allow the death penalty in cases involving the murder of a child, a police officer or a corrections officer. The bill largely mirrors a capital punishment statute that legislators repealed in 2009. As lawmakers wrangled with the bill and its potential costs, some committee members questioned the legislation's clarity and whether it could withstand court challenges. "It doesn't feel like it was well thought out to me," said Rep. Doreen Gallegos, D-Las Cruces. The co-sponsor, Rep. Monica Youngblood, R-Albuquerque, offered a dozen changes Monday night in response to criticism that the bill contained outdated language and other provisions that ...

A nationwide debate on the execution of mentally ill death row prisoners erupted across the country after a federal appeals court last week granted a last-minute stay of execution to convicted murderer and diagnosed schizophrenic Scott Panetti in Texas. Could a similar situation happen in Kentucky? The answer is: It almost did - and still could, said Kentucky lawmakers and death penalty experts. Kentucky law forbids the execution of prisoners with mental retardation, but in 2010 it took another last-minute stay of execution - this one from Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd - to spare the life of Gregory L. Wilson, a death row inmate with a measured IQ of 62. "In Kentucky right now, if a client has an IQ of roughly 70 or below and the defense says, 'My client is mentally disabled and suffers from retardation,' they have a hearing," explained Father Pat Delahanty, a longtime advocate for the abolition of the death penalty in Kentucky. The questi...