Salon.com > capital punishment

Florida law would speed up executions

Wed, 15 May 2013 20:39:00 +0000

A bill that has passed both the Florida House and Senate -- and looks likely to be signed into law by Gov. Rick Scott in the coming days -- would speed up the process that sees death row inmates executed in the state. It is, as the New York Times editorial board commented, "grotesque," especially in a state that has seen 24 death row exonerations (leading the country in this regard) and should thus be weary of speedy executions.

The ill-named Timely Justice Act would require the governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days of a review of a capital conviction by the State Supreme Court. The state would then be required to execute the defendant within 180 days of the warrant. So if signed intolaw, 13 of Florida's 405 death row inmates will be immediately issued death warrants. The legislation aims to save money and time but, as Rania Khalek pointed out, at the possible expense of innocent lives:

Mississippi grants stay of controversial execution within hours

Tue, 07 May 2013 20:45:00 +0000

When Willie Manning was sentenced to death in Mississippi in 1994, DNA science was not where it is today. In fact, DNA evidence used to convict the man of the shooting deaths of two Mississippi State University students -- based on a hair sample -- have been deemed "invalid" by the Justice Department and the FBI. Nonetheless, Manning was scheduled to die by lethal injection at 6 p.m. Tuesday. With just hours to spare, the Mississippi Supreme Court moved to delay his execution indefinitely. The AP reported:

The court said the execution should be delayed until it rules further on the case.

Manning's lawyers had claimed DNA evidence would clear him of the killings.

The FBI has said in recent days that there were errors in an agents' testimony about ballistics tests and hair analysis in the case.

5 things you may not know about death penalty

Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:05:00 +0000

On March 15, 2013 Maryland became the sixth state in the U.S. to either abolish the death penalty or to impose a moratorium upon its use, joining Illinois (2001), New York (2007), New Jersey (2007), New Mexico (2009), and Connecticut (2012). Bills to abolish the death penalty have either been introduced or will be introduced this year in a number of states, including Alabama, California, Florida, Colorado, and others.

The tide is clearly turning against state-sanctioned killing in the name of the law. What many Americans do not know is that debates about the death penalty are as old as the nation itself. What follows are five facts that every American should know about capital punishment and its history in the U.S.

1. The history of capital punishment is the history of slavery's attempts to destroy free speech.

Maryland abolishing death penalty

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 19:51:00 +0000

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — Maryland lawmakers approved a measure abolishing the death penalty on Friday, and the bill is expected to be signed by the Democratic governor who has long pushed for banning capital punishment in the state.

If the measure is signed by Gov. Martin O'Malley, it will make Maryland the 18th state in the nation to do away with the death penalty.

A repeal bill won final passage from the House of Delegates on Friday. It already had been approved by the Senate.

The House advanced the legislation this week after delegates rejected nearly 20 amendments, mostly from Republicans, aimed at keeping capital punishment for the most heinous crimes.

If passed, life without the possibility of parole would be the most severe sentence in the state.

Supporters of repeal argue that the death penalty is costly, error-prone, racially biased and a poor deterrent of crime. But opponents say it is a necessary tool to punish lawbreakers who commit the most egregious crimes.

Maryland has five men on death row. The measure would not apply to them retroactively, but the legislation makes clear that the governor can commute their sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The state's last execution took place in 2005, during the administration of Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich. He resumed executions after a moratorium had been in place pending a 2003 University of Maryland study, which found significant racial and geographic disparity in how the death penalty was carried out.

Capital punishment was put on hold in Maryland after a December 2006 ruling by Maryland's highest court that the state's lethal injection protocols weren't properly approved by a legislative committee. The committee, whose co-chairs oppose capital punishment, has yet to sign off on protocols.

O'Malley, a Catholic, expressed support for repeal legislation in 2007, but it stalled in a Senate committee.

Maryland has a large Catholic population, and the church opposes the death penalty.

In 2008, lawmakers created a commission to study capital punishment after repeal efforts failed again. The panel recommended a ban later that year, citing racial and jurisdictional disparities in how the death penalty is applied.

In 2009, lawmakers tightened the law to reduce the chances of an innocent person being sent to death row by restricting capital punishment to murder cases with biological evidence such as DNA, videotaped evidence of a murder or a videotaped confession.

According to the Maryland Department of Public Safety & Correctional Services website, Maryland has executed only five inmates since 1976. There were three in the 1990s, and two when Ehrlich was governor.

In contrast, neighboring Virginia has executed 110 inmates since the U.S. Supreme Court restored capital punishment in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. However, Virginia's death row population has dwindled to eight from a peak of 57 in 1995, in part because fewer death sentences are being handed down in the state amid an increased acceptance of life without parole as a reasonable alternative.

The center said death sentences have declined by 75 percent and executions by 60 percent nationally since the 1990s.

Connecticut abolished the death penalty last year. Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York also have outlawed it in recent years.

Saudi, Yemen under fire for child executions

Mon, 04 Mar 2013 17:39:00 +0000

Two of the United States' closest allies in the Middle East -- Yemen and Saudi Arabia -- have come under fire Monday from international human rights groups over the execution of juveniles offenders.

According to Amnesty International, Saudi Arabia is scheduled to execute seven men on Tuesday for crimes committed when they were under 18-years-old. The men, sentenced to death in 2009 for armed robbery, have been "beaten, denied food and water, deprived of sleep, forced to remain standing for 24 hours and then forced to sign 'confessions'," according to Amnesty.

As Reuters noted, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a 2006 report that it was "deeply alarmed" at the imposition of capital punishment by Saudi judges for crimes committed before the age of 18.

Meanwhile, Human Rights Watch has decried the executions in recent years in Yemen of 15 male and female offenders aged under 18 when they committed their offenses. "The New-York-based group also called on the president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to reverse the execution orders of three juveniles on death row, whose appeals have been exhausted," the Guardian reported.

A schizophrenic who gouged out his eyes is on Texas death row

Mon, 25 Feb 2013 18:21:00 +0000

In December 2008, Andre Thomas pulled out and ate his left eyeball. He had gouged out the right eye in 2004, having taken a bible passage literally, six days after he brutally murdered his estranged wife, their young son and her 13-month-old daughter. His attorney Maurie Levin, who is co-director of Texas' Capital Punishment Clinic, told Salon that her client is "transparently and floridly" mentally ill. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic while in prison, having heard voices in his head since childhood. What sort of system sentences Andre Thomas to death?

Texas Tribune managing editor Brandi Grissom has followed Thomas' case closely. As she noted in an excellent feature for theTexas Monthly, "as he awaits execution, Andre and his tragic case force uncomfortable questions about the intersection of mental illness and the criminal justice system." Thomas is certainly not the only death row inmate to have been diagnosed with mental illness; more than 20 percent of the 290 inmates on Texas' death row are considered mentally ill, as Grissom noted. But the extremity of his situation has prompted fervid responses locally and nationally. "It's astonishing, just how many problems in the legal system [this case] exemplifies," said Levin in a phone interview.

Mentally disabled man granted last-minute stay of execution

Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:21:00 +0000

Warren Hill, a 53-year-old death row inmate with severe learning disabilities, was just 30 minutes away from receiving a lethal injection from the state of Georgia Tuesday evening when he learned of the stay of execution from the federal appeals court for the 11th circuit.

As Salon noted on Monday, all medical specialists who have examined Hill -- a death row inmate of 16 years -- have now concluded that he is unfit to face the death penalty. A 2002 Supreme Court ruling prohibits executions of "mentally retarded" prisoners as a breach of constitutional protections from cruel and unusual punishment. Hill has nonetheless twice been within hours of scheduled death since 2011 before an appeals court has ordered a stay. Georgia is noted by experts as having a problematically high bar for proving mental unfitness for execution.

The Guardian noted how Hill's case has prompted less public outrage than Georgia's execution in 2011 of Troy Davis -- a man put to death for murder despite the majority of witnesses in his trial recanting their original testimonies: