Death Penalty News

A top military court delivered a unanimous decision to uphold the death penalty conviction of ex-Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded dozens of others at then-Fort Hood, Texas. On Nov. 5, 2009, Hasan walked into a readiness processing center and opened fire with a semi-automatic handgun. Thirteen people, including a pregnant soldier, died in the barrage. At his court-martial, Hasan admitted to the shooting, and he was sentenced to death. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces rejected Hasan’s motion to reverse his death sentence after not finding enough merits to his arguments to grant his motion.

After what’s been deemed “the year of the botched execution,” Texas should end the practice. More than forty years ago, during the first week of December in 1982, the U.S. executed its first prisoner using lethal injection. On December 7 of that year, six years after the death penalty was revalidated by the Supreme Court, Charles Brooks Jr. , who had been convicted of murder, was executed in Huntsville, here in Texas. To date, 1,380 others have been executed via lethal injection, comprising nearly 90 percent of all death row executions. In 2023, eight more Texans will be executed by injection.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death has left the Supreme Court shorthanded during a polarizing presidential campaign in which President Donald Trump has already suggested he may not accept the outcome and the court could be called on to step in and decide the fate of the nation. It’s the second time in four years that a justice has died during an election year, though that eight-justice court was not asked to referee any election disputes in 2016. Today, both sides have armies of lawyers ready to take the outcome to court. The Supreme Court’s role, then, could be vital in deciding a contested election, as it was in 2000 when its 5-4 ruling effectively handed the presidential election to Republican George W. Bush. Just moments after Ginsburg’s death the prospect of a disputed election and the role of the court in deciding it was already causing anxiety across the political spectrum. But the makeup of the court is significantly different today from what it was after Justice Antonin Sca...

Even as law enforcement tries to reduce the number of deaths attributed to the super-opioid fentanyl, some states are trying to increase them through their use for capital punishment. In the United States, capital punishment is mostly a matter of state law, so long as it doesn’t violate the Constitution’s ban on “cruel and unusual punishment.” There is no accepted legal definition of what “cruel and unusual” means, but that doesn’t seem to be the real concern. We don’t seem to care much about whether the convict suffers, but whether he (or she) appears to have suffered. We appear to be more concerned with whether the officials conducting the execution and the witnesses are so disturbed by what they see that they suffer post-traumatic stress disorder or, worse, start to advocate for the abolition of the death penalty. Most nations of the world already have abolished capital punishment—including Canada, most of Latin America and Europe—and that has created a problem ...

(CNN)  Anthony Kennedy's announcement of his retirement from the Supreme Court on Wednesday creates an opening for President Donald Trump to reshape the ideological makeup of the nation's highest court for decades to come, a best-case scenario for a Republican Party that only reluctantly accepted the idea of the reality-star-turned-politician as its leader. Kennedy, who was appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, was long rumored as a potential retiree -- although when he didn't announce that retirement at the close of the court's session on Wednesday morning there was some sense that perhaps all of the whispers about his future plans had been wrong. But at 81 years old, Kennedy decided now was the right time to say goodbye. "It has been the greatest honor and privilege to serve our nation in the federal judiciary for 43 years, 30 of those years on the Supreme Court," he wrote in a letter to Trump informing the President of his decision....

Washington (CNN) Justice Anthony Kennedy, a conservative who provided key votes for same sex-marriage, abortion access and affirmative action, will retire from the Supreme Court. The retirement is effective July 31, Kennedy said in a letter to President Donald Trump on Wednesday. Kennedy's decision to step down could transform the Supreme Court for generations. Trump will have his second opportunity to nominate a justice and will likely replace Kennedy with a young, conservative jurist. That would create a bloc of five staunch conservative justices who could move the court further to the right and cement a conservative majority for the foreseeable future. The nomination battle will likely ignite a firestorm on Capitol Hill as it comes just a year after Republicans changed the rules of the Senate in order to push through the nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump's first nominee. A senior White House official said Trump will push for the swift confirmation ...

  California's next governor could be forced to make a life-or-death decision that the state's top executive hasn't faced in over a decade: whether to spare an inmate facing execution. There are nearly 750 people on death row at San Quentin State Prison, more than any other state, and decisions made by the next governor will help set the pace of executions going forward. 5 of the 6 top candidates oppose the death penalty. But few say they'd use the office's commutation power to broadly move inmates from death row to life in prison. "Unless Jerry Brown steps in or one of these candidates for governor steps in, I think there's going to be executions in California," said Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of UC Berkeley Law School. "It seems like it's a matter of time." California hasn't executed an inmate since Clarence Ray Allen on Jan. 17, 2006. And more than 1/2 of the inmates on California death row have waited more than 20 ...