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Capital Defense Weekly

Death Penalty News & Updates

Post Frequency: 3.2/day

Last Entry: March 06, 2011 at 23:00:32

Florida stay

Posted on October 06, 2008
The Florida Supreme Court has delayed for three weeks the execution of Wayne Tompkins who had been scheduled to die Oct. 28.

Posted on October 06, 2008
The Associated Press notes: A dozen condemned Texas inmates, including one set to die next week and one of the few women on death row in the state, lost appeals Monday before the U.S. Supreme Court, moving them closer to execution. Including in the dozen denied was Jimmie Urbano Lucero v...

no action on Troy Davis

Posted on October 06, 2008
[Update] Troy Davis’ case will be reconferenced this Friday. —– No action today today from the Suprme Court on Troy Davis’ case. Scotusblog.com will have more.

email edition available

Posted on October 05, 2008
This week’s email edition is out. Leading off this edition are three opinions from the Florida Supreme Court. In Maas v. Olive the court examines the Florida postconviction compensation scheme, its purported caps, and finds it wanting. In Jerry Michael Wickham v...

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death row realism II

Posted on October 02, 2008
Jack Payden-Travers of the ACLU?s Capital Punishment Project notes in the Pasadena Star-News: In Maryland, the Urban Institute study of March 2008 noted that it costs the state three times more to try a death penalty case than a non-death penalty case...

Death row realism

Posted on October 02, 2008
via Just Crim: Latimes.com, Opinion: “Death row realism - Do executions make us safer? San Quentin’s former warden says no.” By Jeanne Woodford (October 2, 2008): “As the warden of San Quentin, I presided over four executions...

Tex CCA orders an Atkins remand

Posted on October 01, 2008
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has ordered� a remand for further factual development in Ex parte Timothy Cockrell,� No. WR-41,775-02.� Specifically: BODY,.aolmailheader {font-size:10pt; color:black; font-family:Arial;} a.aolmailheader:link {color:blue; text-decoration:underline; font-weight:normal;} a...

cert grants

Posted on October 01, 2008
The Court granted cert this morning in seven criminal cases, including one capital,(Montejo v. Louisiana, 07-1529 (congrats to the Capital Appeals Project). The two most interesting of the seven on the list, at least from this vantage point here, are: Docket: 07-1529 Title: Montejo v...

Kennedy v. Louisiana

Posted on October 01, 2008
The Supreme Court, as most by now know, refused rehearing in Kennedy v. Louisiana. The SCOTUSBlog’s analysis begins this way: After a summer of public conversation, and legal argument, the Supreme Court put an end ? at least temporarily ? to the speculation that it might alter its approach to the constitutionality of the death penalty...

Life in Wyoming

Posted on October 01, 2008
One of the cases we are tracking at the trial level, the trial of Donald Rolle in Wyoming, has received a life verdict for his role in the kidnapping and death of Jennifer Randel.

SCOTUS stays another execution

Posted on September 30, 2008
from the wires: Two-time killer Freddie Eugene Owens has received an indefinite stay of his scheduled Friday execution from the U.S. Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. signed the order Tuesday afternoon. Roberts ordered the stay to allow the Greenville man?s attorney time to raise constitutional issues to the high court dealing with his death sentence stemming [...

Tony Amsterdam to be honored

Posted on September 30, 2008
From DPIC: Leading attorney, law professor, and advocate Anthony Amsterdam is being honored by the Southern Center for Human Rights with the Frederick Douglass Human Rights Award in Washington, DC on October 2. Professor Amsterdam conducts the Capital Defender Clinic at New York University Law School and is recognized for his four decades of prominent work [...

Death, an IG and politics

Posted on September 29, 2008
An Investigation into the Removal of Nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006, U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility, Sept. 2008. (PDF, 392 pp., 3.6 Megs). That report highlights the concerns about Paul Charlton�(USA Ariz),� p...

Another serial killer gets life

Posted on September 27, 2008
Kill one person, end up on death row, kill half a dozen, DPIC notes: Prosecutors decided against pursuing a death sentence for a serial killer in Terrebonne Parish in Louisiana. Roland Dominique, who was arrested at a homeless shelter, pled guilty to the murder of eight young men, and he may have killed as many as [...

When the Attorney General loses on appeal to a pro se capital litigant

Posted on January 15, 2008
From our friends at Decision of the Day Plaintiff David Hammer lives in the Special Confinement Unit at the federal prison in Terre Haute, where all federal death row inmates are held. Hammer was sent to the SCU for killing his cellmate; although his death sentence has since been vacated, he was unable to participate in several interviews due to the SCU?s strict rules regarding media interviews...

New resources on Kennedy v. Louisiana

Posted on January 14, 2008
Thought you might be interested in a resource page Corey Yung is assembling on the Kennedy case.� You can view it at: http://sexcrimes.typepad.com/sex_crimes/kennedy-v-louisiana.html .� I’m a big fan of Corey’s blog at work, it has already richly paid off sexcrimes...

A BIG cert denial

Posted on January 14, 2008
A big cert denial today.� The Court this morning denied certiorari in federal death penalty case, Fields v. United States. The issue in Fields was the application of the Confrontation Clause to the penalty phase of a capital trial in light of the SCOTUS?s watershed decision in Crawford v...

email edition available

Posted on January 14, 2008
The email edition is now available. From the intro: If you have haven’t guessed, thanks to the traditional early January slowdown, there isn’t much new case law to report in this edition. The Baze oral arguments dominates this issue. The oral argument transcript reveals that all the Justices appear to support the concept that the Eighth Amendment does apply to the procedures of how a person is executed...

New Jersey Lawyer editorial: Give NJ’s public defenders & NJADP the Nobel Prize

Posted on January 13, 2008
This is appearing in Monday’s New Jersey Lawyer: When we ask “what is the difference,” [between Texas and NewJersey on the death penalty] two groups come to mind in addition to our conscientious Supreme Court and its proportionality reviews, and our legislators who moved beyond the simple retributive logic of a life for a life...

Meet the executioners

Posted on January 13, 2008
Two pieces on the people and process of executions in Missouri and Virginia.� Together the� pieces examine a fundamental and irreconcilable paradox. The gallows fairs of [yesteryear] might have been cruel but they were, at least, human. By contrast, if the ideal “humane execution” were ever achieved, its clinical efficiency would force everyone involved - the warden, the witnesses and the condemned - to envisage a human life as a pure disposable object: a mentality usually associated with profound psychosis...

Machine readable implants for inmates?

Posted on January 13, 2008
Slashdot has this disturbing piece: There is a proposal in the UK to implant “machine-readable” microchips under the skin of thousands of offenders in an effort to free up more space in British jails. The article states that uses are being considered both for home detention, as a means to enforce punishment, as well as for sex offenders after their release...

Slashing counsel’s fees

Posted on January 13, 2008
A federal trial court judge appointed appointed Craig Washington to represent truck driver Tyrone Williams in two federal trials involving the 2003 deaths of 19 illegal immigrants.� Over the course of two trials Washington successfully beat back the federal government’s attempts to obtain a death verdict for Williams...

Further costs of a broken system

Posted on January 11, 2008
via TalkLeft Nick Yarris, released from jail four years ago after spending 22 years in prison having been sentenced to death for a murder he didn?t commit, has settled his wrongful conviction case against Delaware County, PA for $4 million. The settlement was the result of a malicious-prosecution lawsuit Yarris filed in 2004 against Delaware County and the law enforcement officials who investigated and prosecuted him, and it came as the case was moving closer to trial in U...

bits & bytes: previews of upcoming posts

Posted on January 10, 2008
I?m hoping to have time to address all the stories below at some length in the not too distant future, however, the remainder of my week is heavy on court dates. Nebraska appears to be more and more looking like it will be having a show down vote on repealing the death penalty in 2008...

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