« Disconcerting rise in violent crime rates | Main | More strong work by Judge Bataillon on Booker and the sentencing process »
February 12, 2006
Another lethal litigation update
The Kansas City Star has two informative pieces about an on-going lethal injection scrummage: this piece details that an Eighth Circuit panel will hear oral argument in April in the Missouri litigation, and this piece discusses more broadly the law and facts surrounding challenges to the constitutionality of lethal injection.
Meanwhile, in this Baltimore Sun commentary, Professor Steven P. Grossman explores whether capital punishment is worth all the trouble it produces: "We have long debated whether capital punishment is just. It is time we ask whether it is worth the price that we pay for it."
Related recent posts:
- And the lethal injection litigation played on...
- Back to the lethal injection litigation
- More lethal injection scrummages
- Still more on the lethal injection scrummages
UPDATE: The always effective Death Penalty Information Center now has this helpful summary of all the lethal injection litigation developments, which details that SCOTUS involvement has led to stays in four case and allowed executions to go forward in four other cases.
February 12, 2006 at 10:48 AM | Permalink
TrackBack
TrackBack URL for this entry:
https://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d83451574769e200d834737eb553ef
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Another lethal litigation update:
Comments
Grossman's piece simply accepts as given that the present protracted appeals are a necessary price for capital punishment. If I accepted the premise, I might agree, but I do not. In the absence of an realistic question of identity of the perpetrator, a single full and fair review of the penalty phase is sufficient.
We can and should simply eliminate repeated reviews of questions having no bearing on the reliability of the guilt verdict. That would eliminate the bulk of the litigation in the bulk of the cases. Five years from sentence to execution would be a realistic target for the median case, if we did it right.
Posted by: Kent Scheidegger | Feb 12, 2006 3:09:17 PM
