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: Capital Defense Weekly

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By Karl R. Keys, Esq.

From this week’s edition: Leading off this week is Thomas Robert Lane v. State from the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.The decision is relatively straight forward, relief granted as the trial court infringed on the right of the choice of counsel under the Sixth Amendment.  Specifically, the Lane Court holds that because trial counsel was not a necessary witness it was error to remove him. The Court goes further and holds that “there is no difference between retained counsel and appointed counsel when it comes to the right to continued representation by counsel of choice.” As such, removal of even a court appointed attorney, is “structural error” not subject to harmless error analysis. The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections recently sued every inmate on death row, in an effort to block any one of them from challenging the state’s lethal injection procedures DPIC reports that in South Carolina the state’s longest-serving death row inmate, Edward Lee Elmore, appears to have been spared from execution when a state circuit court ruled he suffered from mental retardation...continue to full post

Full post as published by Capital Defense Weekly on February 16, 2010 (boomark / email).