Death Penalty News

Is the death penalty unconstitutional because it violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against "cruel and unusual punishment?" According to the U.S. Supreme Court the answer is "yes" -- and "no." In other words, "It depends." In Furman v. Georgia, which was decided this week (June 29) in 1972, the Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional and did violate the Eighth Amendment because it was applied in "arbitrary and capricious ways." African-Americans and other minorities, the court noted, were much more likely to get the death penalty than whites, not only because of the color of their skin but also because (often a result of the color of their skin) of the quality of their legal representation. William Furman, the defendant in the case, was a case in point. While Furman was burglarizing a home, he tripped while trying to flee and his gun accidentally went off, killing a resident. He was tried for murd...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to halt the execution of a Virginia woman who planned the murders of her husband and stepson, meaning that the state is almost certain to execute its first woman in nearly a century. Teresa Lewis , 41, admitted that she plotted the 2002 killings of her husband, Julian Lewis, and his son, Charles "C.J." Lewis, to collect insurance money. Lewis is scheduled to die by injection Thursday night. In a two-paragraph order, the high court said Lewis's application to stay her death sentence was denied. In recent days, Lewis's supporters have argued that she does not deserve to die because she is borderline mentally retarded, with the intellectual ability of about a 13-year-old, and had been used by a much smarter conspirator. It is unfair, they said, that she was condemned to death while the two men who fired the shots received life terms. Click here to read the full article . Source: The Washington Post , September 22, 2010

On October 13, 2010 the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Skinner v. Switzer to determine whether Hank Skinner's request for DNA testing can be considered as a civil rights claim rather than as part of his death penalty appeal. Skinner has always maintained his innocence. Source: Texas Moratorium Network , September 10, 2010

Washington (CNN) -- Elena Kagan was confirmed as the 112th justice to the Supreme Court Thursday and could be sworn into her judicial post by week's end. The vote on the Senate floor was 63-37. Five Republicans in the Senate had signaled their intention to vote for Kagan, meaning conservatives didn't have the strength in numbers to delay the proceedings with a filibuster. Only one Democrat announced his opposition: Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska. "I have heard concerns from Nebraskans regarding Ms. Kagan, and her lack of a judicial record makes it difficult for me to discount the concerns raised by Nebraskans, or to reach a level of comfort that these concerns are unfounded," he said in a statement. Kagan will become only the fourth woman ever to sit on the prestigious bench. The New York native and former Harvard Law School dean will replace the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. She was picked by President Obama on May 10, and the Judiciary Committee sent her n...

Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan (left) is reaffirming her support for the death penalty, saying its constitutionality is "established law." Under questioning by Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin at her confirmation hearing, Kagan says she has a different outlook than her mentor, the late Justice Thurgood Marshall, who dissented in every death penalty case based on moral grounds. Kagan says she believes the death penalty is "settled precedent going forward" and generally should not be disrupted. Source: Associated Press, June 29, 2010 Further reading: " The Generalissima Dances " on Jeff Gamso's blog " For The Defense ". Excerpts:  " Anything the Supreme Court has ever decided is, the Generalissima tells us, "precedent" and "settled law." No one has pressed her particularly hard, and she's declined to give any sort of meaningful answer, on whether or when "precedent" and "settled law" should...

WASHINGTON — The Second Amendment’s guarantee of an individual right to bear arms applies to state and local gun control laws, the Supreme Court ruled Monday in a 5-to-4 decision. The ruling came almost exactly two years after the court first ruled that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to own guns in District of Columbia v. Heller, another 5-to-4 decision. But the Heller case addressed only federal laws; it left open the question of whether Second Amendment rights protect gun owners from overreaching by state and local governments. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., writing for the majority, said the right to self-defense protected by the Second Amendment was fundamental to the American conception of ordered liberty. Like other provisions of the Bill of Rights setting out such fundamental protections, he said, it must be applied to limit not only federal power but also that of state and local governments. The ruling is an enormous symbolic victory for supporters of gun r...

June 24, 2010: The U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of Billy Joe Magwood, ruling that Magwood can argue that Alabama retroactively changed its laws to make his crime qualify for the death penalty. Magwood, 59, black, was convicted for the murder of then 51-year-old Sheriff C.F. “Neil” Grantham, whom Magwood targeted after he served time on drug charges. Magwood became convinced that Grantham jailed him without cause and vowed revenge. On the morning of March 1, 1979, he parked outside the jail and waited for the sheriff to arrive. When Grantham got out of his car, Magwood shot him and fled the scene. Magwood was sentenced to death June 2, 1981. The conviction and death sentence were upheld by the state courts and the U.S. Supreme Court. In 1985, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama also upheld the conviction, but required a new sentencing hearing for the consideration of additional mitigating circumstances. Magwood was again sentenced to death ...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday upheld death sentences for 2 Texas inmates, including a man accused of leading a gang responsible for several murders, and refused to reconsider the case of a British grandmother condemned for killing a woman and kidnapping her newborn son. Dexter Darnell Johnson, 22, was convicted of the June 2006 shooting deaths of a young couple during a carjacking. Investigators said the Houston man was the ringleader of a group responsible for dozens of robberies and at least four homicides. The justices also upheld the conviction of Max Soffar, 54, for a shooting rampage at a bowling alley that killed 3 people in 1980. The court also refused to rehear its rejection of an appeal from Linda Carty, a 51-year-old British grandmother convicted of murdering her neighbor and taking the victim's 4-day-old son in 2001. Carty maintains her innocence, but prosecutors said she was desperate to have child after a miscarriage. The infant was found unharmed. Carty is amo...

Condemned inmate Troy Anthony Davis (left) got his day in court to present new evidence he contends proves he did not kill an off-duty policeman 21 years ago. After hearing all the evidence, a federal judge now must decide whether Davis should be spared from execution. In closing arguments Thursday, a member of Davis' legal team contended police rushed to judgment and got the wrong man in the killing. But a state attorney countered that Davis had fallen far short of producing enough new evidence to convince anyone that he did not gun down Savannah police Officer Mark Allen MacPhail as he ran to the aid of a homeless man being pistol-whipped. At the close of the extraordinary two-day hearing ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court, U.S. District Judge William T. Moore Jr. did not issue an immediate ruling. He instructed attorneys to file legal briefs by July 7 and said he would rule as promptly as possible. Earlier Thursday, however, Moore handed Davis' legal team a huge blow by ru...

SAVANNAH, Georgia — Lawyers for a US convict were to present evidence Thursday that could show a man who has spent nearly 20 years on death row is innocent of the 1989 murder of an off-duty police officer. Attorneys for Troy Davis were to spend a second day seeking to demonstrate their client deserves a retrial, a day after a string of witnesses admitted they lied during his 1991 trial. The admissions came at a special hearing ordered by the US Supreme Court last year, after seven of the nine witnesses who testified against Davis in 1991 recanted. The witnesses, some of whom were illiterate, in prison, or in their teens when they originally testified, provided the key evidence that convicted Davis, an African-American, of murdering Mark McPhail, a white police officer. Davis, now 41, has always proclaimed his innocence, and one-by-one Wednesday, witnesses admitted they had lied to help convict him. "When the police arrived, I told them I could barely recognize the shooter,...

Troy Anthony Davis returns this week to Savannah, where he was convicted and sentenced to death almost 2 decades ago for killing an off-duty police officer during a late-night melee in a Burger King parking lot. For more than a decade, Davis has sought to present his claims of innocence, including the recantations of 7 key prosecution witnesses, in court. On Wednesday, in U.S. District Court in Savannah, thanks to an extraordinary ruling last year by the nation's highest court, he will finally get that chance. Davis' innocence claims have attracted international attention, including calls from former President Jimmy Carter and Pope Benedict XVI that he be spared from execution. Last August, for the 1st time in nearly half a century, and the 1st time ever in a death-penalty case, the U.S. Supreme Court took a case filed directly to its docket. It accepted Davis' last-ditch plea because Davis had exhausted all his appeals. The high court ordered a federal judge to convene ...

The Salt Lake Tribune Updated: 06/17/2010 04:00:40 PM MDT Just hours before Ronnie Lee Gardner is scheduled to be put to death, Gov. Gary Herbert has turned down his request to temporarily halt the execution until the killer is awarded another commutation hearing. Another last-ditch effort to save Gardner failed Thursday, when the 10th U.S. Circuit Court turned down an appeal from the killer. The condemned man's lawyer's immediately appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a second appeal is already pending. The execution is set for 12:05 a.m. Friday. "Upon careful review, there is nothing in the materials provided this morning that has not already been considered and decided by the Board of Pardons and Parole or numerous courts," Herbert wrote in a letter to Gardner's attorneys. "Mr. Gardner has had a full and fair opportunity to have his case considered by numerous tribunals." The Utah Constitution does not grant the governor the au...

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that, under extraordinary circumstances, courts should accept death row appeals even after a 1-year statute of limitations has expired. The US Supreme Court has made it easier for some death row inmates to overcome a 1-year statute of limitations for filing a federal appeal of their capital sentence. The high court ruled 7 to 2 on Monday that under certain extraordinary circumstances courts should allow an appeal to be filed even after the 1-year deadline has expired. The decision came in the case of Florida death row inmate Albert Holland, who lost his right to file a federal appeal of his death sentence when his lawyer missed the 1-year deadline established under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA). In Holland's case, a panel of the Eleventh US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that his attorney’s conduct was not egregious enough to warrant setting aside imposition of the deadline. The attorney would have to have acte...

The Tarrant County case of Henry "Hank" Skinner could determine what access inmates have to DNA testing. A Texas death row inmate, convicted of murder in Tarrant County, will get the chance to plead his case before the U.S. Supreme Court for a DNA test, that he claims will clear his name. Henry "Hank" Skinner killed his ex-girlfriend and 2 other people in 1993. He did not receive a genetic test at his trial, but he wants one now. The high court agreed to hear the case to decide whether inmates may use a federal civil rights law to do DNA testing. "I really believe that technology should be used in a way to help people people who claim they are innocent," death penalty opponent, Rick Halperin, said. The SMU professor says the case could open the door for many more inmates to press for the expensive testing. "It raises questions about America's responsibility to people who are incarcerated and have claims that this will vindicate those claims....

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a Texas death row inmate should have access to evidence for DNA testing that he says could clear him of 3 murders. The justices said Monday they will use the case of Hank Skinner to decide whether prison inmates may use a federal civil rights law to do DNA testing that was not performed prior to their conviction. Federal appeals courts around the country have decided the issue differently. The high court previously blocked Skinner's execution while it considered his appeal. Skinner, 47, faced lethal injection for the bludgeoning and strangling of his girlfriend, Twila Jean Busby, 40, and the stabbing of her 2 adult sons. The slayings occurred at their home in the Texas Panhandle town of Pampa on New Year's Eve in 1993. He was arrested about 3 hours after the bodies were found. Police found him in a closet at the trailer home of a woman he knew. He was splattered with the blood of at least 2 of the victims. The former oil field...

A good way to end up on death row in Texas is to be accused of a capital crime and have Jerry Guerinot represent you. 20 of Mr. Guerinot's clients have been sentenced to death. That is more people than are awaiting execution in about 1/2 of the 35 states that have the death penalty. "People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said. So what is Mr. Guerinot's secret? It seems to boil down to a failure to conduct even rudimentary investigations, said David R. Dow, a law professor at the University of Houston and the litigation director of the Texas Defender Service, which represents death row inmates, including not a few of Mr. Guerinot’s former clients. "He doesn't even pick the low-hanging fruit which is hitting him in the head as he's walking under the tree," Mr. Dow said. Mr. Guerinot did not respond to two messages seeking comment. In 2007, he told The Observer, a London newspaper, ...

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that teenagers may not be locked up in prison for life with no chance of parole if they have not killed anyone. By a 6-3 vote Monday, the court said the U.S. Constitution requires that young people serving life sentences must at least be considered for release. The court ruled in the case of Terrance Graham, who was implicated in armed robberies when he was 16 and 17. Graham was on probation for robbery when he broke into a home and committed another robbery just before his 18th birthday. Although he was eligible for a minimum 5-year sentence, the judge sentenced him to the maximum of life, saying he was a threat to society and had made a conscious decision to throw his life away. Graham, now 22, is in prison in Florida, which holds more than 70 percent of juvenile defendants locked up for life for crimes other than homicide, and where parole had been abolished. [A juvenile sentenced to life in Florida may only be released by an executive order grant...

It's been a quarter-century of legal battles and court hearings, and now the only Canadian on death row in the United States is about to hit the wall in his fight to stay alive. Ronald Smith's case is to go before the U.S. Supreme Court this fall — the last legal option available to him. "Frankly our assessment is any time you are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review a case, and, given the limited number of cases they review, it's probably somewhat of a long shot,” Smith’s lawyer of many years, Greg Jackson, told The Canadian Press. "That's really from the court system standpoint our last chance ... We've exhausted all state and federal remedies other than the U.S. Supreme Court. If the U.S. Supreme Court does not either hear the petition or grant relief, then basically it will be remanded back to the state of Montana to go forward with an execution date." Smith (pictured), 52, has been living on borrowed time since he was convicted in 1983 of ...

WASHINGTON — President Obama has nominated Solicitor General Elena Kagan (left) as the nation’s 112th justice, choosing his own chief advocate before the Supreme Court to join it in ruling on cases critical to his view of the country’s future. After a monthlong search, Mr. Obama informed Ms. Kagan and his advisers on Sunday of his choice to succeed the retiring Justice John Paul Stevens. In settling on Ms. Kagan, the president chose a well-regarded 50-year-old lawyer who served as a staff member in all three branches of government and was the first woman to be dean of Harvard Law School. If confirmed, she would be the youngest member and the third woman on the current court, but the first justice in nearly four decades without any prior judicial experience. That lack of time on the bench may both help and hurt her confirmation prospects, allowing critics to question whether she is truly qualified while denying them a lengthy judicial paper trail filled with ammunition ...

Modern pressures on the judicial system have raised the chance a defendant could be wrongly sentenced to death, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens (pictured) said Wednesday, explaining his changed view on the constitutionality of capital punishment. "The risk of an incorrect decision has increased," he told an audience of hundreds of lawyers and judges at a judicial conference here, responding to a question about his 2008 assertion that the death penalty should be abolished. He said that because of advances in DNA testing, which have led to the freeing of some innocent convicts, "we're more aware of the risk than we might have been before." In a lethal-injection dispute from Kentucky two years ago, Stevens concluded for the first time that "the death penalty represents the pointless and needless extinction of life with only marginal contributions" to society. Stevens, who will retire this summer after nearly 35 years on the bench, offered both ...