A capital morning in the papers

This morning brings a host of interesting articles about the death penalty in major papers:

• The New York Times has this fine front-page piece by Adam Liptak on the Tookie Williams case and the modern state of capital clemency.  The article astutely details that "Governors once considered the commutation of a death sentence to be an act of mercy or grace.  In recent years, though, they have tended to act only to correct errors in the judicial system and, occasionally, to take account of mental illness or retardation."  Dan Markel notes here, with appropriate pride, that his recent Minnesota Law Review article gets discussed in the Times piece.

• The Washington Post has this fine front-page piece, entitled "More in U.S. Expressing Doubts About Death Penalty," which discusses Ruben Cantu's possible innocence and details recent death penalty trends.

• The Lawrence World-Journal has this interesting piece noting that Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline "said Thursday he may need U.S. Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito on the court to successfully defend the Kansas death penalty."