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November 9, 2017
Florida and Texas carry out executions on same night
As reported in these two articles, two states carried out two death sentences via lethal injection yesterday:
- "Witness curses, ridicules inmate as Florida executes convicted killer of two"
- "Mexican citizen executed in Texas for cousin's 1997 slaying"
I believe this is the first time since January 2015 in which two different states carried out executions on the same day. (Arkansas back in April carried out two executions in one state in one day.)
This development is not quite conclusive proof that machineries of death are humming along again, but it serves as still more evidence to support my belief that the results of the 2016 election cycle — especially the vote in support of improving the operation of the death penalty in California and the election of Donald Trump as President — may have significantly turned around the declining fortunes of the death penalty in the US. I doubt we will get back to 1990s levels of death sentences and executions in the US absent a huge spike in homicides. But there are still over 2800 condemned persons on death rows throughout the US, and it seems quite possible we could before long start seeing 50 or more executions per year again (which was, roughly speaking, the average during the administrations of Bill Clinton and Geotge W. Bush).
November 9, 2017 at 09:14 AM | Permalink
Comments
rubbish
Posted by: peter | Nov 9, 2017 10:03:50 AM
"The friend who was with Cardenas during the abduction, Jose Antonio Lopez Castillo, now 45, was convicted of aggravated kidnapping and is serving a 25-year prison term."
A term that would have been just for the person executed and which in numerous other comparable cases would have been given. But, our system is arbitrary and led to a capital sentence in his case. The other execution was a rage induced double murder [one seems to be in effect a witness] and again prison time would be just & many places deem it to be.
Posted by: Joe | Nov 9, 2017 11:20:53 AM