Death Penalty News

The Supreme Court announced Monday that it would not hear a case challenging the constitutionality of the death penalty. The appeal was filed on behalf of Shonda Walter, who was sentenced to death in May 2006 for murdering her next door neighbor with a hatchet and stealing his car. The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania upheld the lower court's death sentence, saying the court found the evidence sufficient to support her conviction for 1st-degree murder. In appealing the decision to the Supreme Court, Walter asked the justices to weigh in on whether the imposition of the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. The court did not give any statement supporting or dissenting from its decision to reject the case. Court watchers have been expecting the justices to take up the constitutionality of the death penalty in light of a dissent by Justice Stephen Breyer last year. Experts said Breyer's dissent provide...

Abolitionists are now pinning hopes on the case of Pennsylvania woman Shonda Walter "His head was in his hands," the defence lawyer recalled of the hearing, "and he just had a troubled look on his face." Anthony Kennedy, the swing vote on the 9-member US Supreme Court, would rule in the case last June with the death penalty majority. But it clearly did not sit easily with him. Abolitionists who have for years studied every twist and turn, every nuance in the court's rulings on the issue, trying to find hints of a change in the judicial climate, sense that this at last might be a moment of opportunity. Kennedy has ruled both ways in cases where limits have been proposed on the scope of the death penalty - age, mental capacity, etc - but has not yet made explicit his view of its overall constitutionality. But, significantly, he has spoken of the need to take into account public and international opinion. And the tide has definitely turned. Oppon...

Justice Stephen G. Breyer Justice Stephen G. Breyer has used an Alabama capital case to renew his call to examine the constitutionality of the death penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant a stay of execution for the inmate, Chistopher Eugene Brooks, drawing a dissent from Breyer, report BuzzFeed News , the Montgomery Advertiser and Al.com .  Brooks was executed Thursday evening . Breyer said Alabama allows jurors to issue an "advisory verdict" in death penalty cases using a system that is much like the death penalty scheme struck down on Jan. 12 in Hurst v. Florida. "The unfairness inherent in treating this case differently from others which used similarly unconstitutional procedures only underscores the need to reconsider the validity of capital punishment under the Eighth Amendment," Breyer wrote. In a concurrence to the cert denial, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg also pointed to possible problems with Alaba...

Shonda Walter Can a convicted killer from Pennsylvania help topple the country's death-penalty laws? Activists who've long sought to abolish capital punishment are betting on it. The U.S. Supreme Court is assessing whether to hear a challenge to a Pennsylvania woman's death sentence that some hope might lead to a landmark decision to eliminate, or modify, the country's death penalty system. In June, Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered comments that death-penalty critics viewed as a promising omen. Both raised constitutional questions about the death penalty in opinions on a case narrowly focused on whether Oklahoma's lethal injection method was legal. The high court ruled that, when carried out properly, capital punishment is constitutional. But the dissents sparked the recent momentum. "Rather than try to patch up the death penalty's legal wounds one at a time, I would ask for full a briefing on a mo...

How does the death penalty in America end? For decades that has been an abstract question. Now there may be an answer in the case of Shonda Walter , a 36-year-old black woman on Pennsylvania’s death row. On Friday, the Supreme Court met to discuss whether to hear a petition from Ms. Walter, who is asking the justices to rule that in all cases, including hers, the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishments. Ever since 1976, when the court allowed executions to resume after a four-year moratorium, the abolition movement has avoided bringing a broad constitutional challenge against the practice, believing that it would not succeed. In that time, 1,423 people  have been put to death. Yet there is no question that the national trend is moving away from capital punishment. Since the late 1990s, almost every year has seen fewer executions, fewer new death sentences and fewer states involved in the repugnant business of killing their ...

Louisiana State Penitentiary Last June, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer suggested that the death penalty might be close to its ultimate demise. "Rather than try to patch up the death penalty's legal wounds one at a time," he wrote in a dissent to Glossip v. Gross, to which Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg added her name, "I would ask for a full briefing on a more basic question: whether the death penalty violates the Constitution." Attorneys for death-row inmates, generally a tight-knit group, immediately started talking about what to do next. While some urged caution — arguing that if the court upholds capital punishment it could set their cause back indefinitely — others sensed a rare opportunity. The most outspoken advocates for a more aggressive strategy have been the 8th Amendment Project , a group of lawyers who oppose the death penalty and are tracking cases that might allow the court to strike it down for good. On Friday (Jan. 15), the...