Sentencing Law and Policy

"Biden Commuted Their Death Sentences. Now What?"

The title of this post is the headline of this interesting new piece at The Intercept by Liliana Segura.  I recommend the piece in full, and here are excerpts:

In the days after President Joe Biden commuted his death sentence, 40-year-old Rejon Taylor felt like he’d been reborn. After facing execution for virtually his entire adult life for a crime he committed at 18, he was fueled by a new sense of purpose. He was “a man on a mission,” he told me in an email on Christmas Day. “I will not squander this opportunity of mercy, of life.”  Taylor saw new signs of life all around him.  Biden had granted clemency to 37 of the 40 men on federal death row, an unprecedented move that none of them expected....

Yet not everyone was eager for a new beginning. Within days of the announcement, two men had sent handwritten emergency petitions to a federal court in Indiana seeking to block the commutation of their death sentences. Neither of them had applied for clemency and both were adamant that they did not want it, arguing that it threatened to derail their efforts to prove their innocence in court. One of them decried Biden’s commutations as a “publicity stunt.” This week a third man, Iouri Mikhel, similarly objected to Biden’s reprieve.

The challenges are a long shot to say the least.  “The Court harbors serious doubt that it has any power to block a commutation,” a federal judge wrote in response to the first two filings.  But the lawsuits also lay bare a sobering reality for most people who go from facing a death sentence to a life sentence with no chance of release.  While people on death row are automatically entitled to legal representation, those serving life without parole are not.  And for those who harbor even the faintest hope of overturning their convictions, a commutation can foreclose on legal avenues that once made it possible.  This is true even for those who do not claim to be innocent but have challenged their convictions on other grounds, from ineffective advocacy by trial lawyers to racial bias to official misconduct.

With Taylor and his neighbors facing a lifetime behind bars — and with more questions than answers about what will happen next — the mood in Terre Haute has shifted.  The initial wave of celebration has given way to anxiety over the future.  Rumors have run rampant about the upcoming prison transfers; some days the men hear they will happen imminently, only to be told that it could be a while.  Many are nervous about living in general population after years or even decades in solitary confinement.

AG Garland rescinds federal execution protocol citing "risk of pain and suffering" in using pentobarbital for lethal injection

Via this new substack post by Chris Geidner, I see that Attorney General Merrick Garland sent this letter to the Director of the Bureau of Prisons to order rescinding the the federal execution protocol "which provides for lethal injection of pentobarbital."  The two-page letter provides this accounting for the action:

The Office of Legal Policy has coordinated review of the [protocol] and the Department's regulations governing the manner of execution, including, as directed by the 2021 Memorandum, in "consultation with all relevant Department components, including the Bureau ofJustice Statistics, Bureau of Prisons, Drug Enforcement Administration, Civil Division, Civil Rights Division, Criminal Division, National Institute ofJustice, and U.S. Marshals Service; other state and federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services; medical experts; experienced capital counsel; and other relevant stakeholders, including members ofthe public, as appropriate."   Having assessed the risk of pain and suffering associated with the use ofpentobarbital, the review concluded that there is significant uncertainty about whether the use ofpentobarbital as a single-drug lethal injection for execution treats individuals humanely and avoids unnecessary pain and suffering.

Because it cannot be said with reasonable confidence that the current execution protocol "not only afford[ s] the rights guaranteed by the Constitution and laws ofthe United States" but "also treat[s] individuals [being executed] fairly and humanely," [2021 AG Memo on Death Penalty] at 1, that protocol should be rescinded, and not reinstated unless and until that uncertainty is resolved. In the face of such uncertainty, the Department should err on the side oftreating individuals humanely and avoiding unnecessary pain and suffering.

The 25-page report of the Office of Legal Policy serving as the foundation of this action is available at this link.

Of course, the incoming Trump Administration can and likely will reconsider these actions and institute a new (or renewed) execution protocol.  But, Prez Biden's commutation of 90%+ of federal death row left only three persons currently subject to execution and none of them has exhausted all of their appeals.  Thus, AG Garland's action may not have any immediate impact on execution possibilities, though it means some more work for any future adminstration seeking to complete any executions.

Also, because there is always considerable state-level litigation over execution protocols, this AG letter and the OLP report could prove of some consequence in some state courts.  It certainly will be cited by death row defendants seeking to preclude use of of pentobarbital in executions.

Outgoing North Carolina Gov issues capital communtations and other notable clemency actions

I believe today is the last full day in office for North Carolina's Governor Roy Cooper, and he is going out with two notable sets of clemency actions as reported in this press releases from this office:

"Governor Issues 2 Commutations and 2 Pardons of Forgiveness"

"Governor Cooper Takes Capital Clemency Actions"

Here is part of the statement regarding the capital clemencies:

Today, Governor Roy Cooper announced that he has commuted the sentences of 15 people on death row in North Carolina to life without the possibility of parole. He commuted these sentences after a thorough review of detailed petitions for clemency submitted by the defendants, input from district attorneys and the families of victims, and close review by the Governor’s Office. 

“These reviews are among the most difficult decisions a Governor can make and the death penalty is the most severe sentence that the state can impose,” said Governor Cooper. “After thorough review, reflection, and prayer, I concluded that the death sentence imposed on these 15 people should be commuted, while ensuring they will spend the rest of their lives in prison.”

No executions have been carried out in North Carolina since 2006 due to ongoing litigation. Before today’s commutations, North Carolina had 136 offenders on death row and the Governor’s Clemency Office received petitions for clemency from 89 of them. The Governor’s Office carefully reviewed, researched, and considered these 89 petitions for commutations, which included the 15 that were granted today.

"Women on Death Row in the United States"

The title of this post is the title of this new paper recently posted to SSRN authored by Sandra Babcock, Nathalie Greenfield and Kathryn Adamson. Here is its abstract:

This Article presents a comprehensive study of forty-eight persons sentenced to death between 1990 and 2022 who were legally recognized as women at the time of their trials.  Our research is the first of its kind to conduct a holistic and intersectional analysis of the factors driving women’s death sentences.  It reveals commonalities across women’s cases, delving into their experiences of motherhood, gender-based violence, and prior involvement with the criminal legal system.  We also explore the nature of the women’s crimes of conviction, including the role of male codefendants and the State’s use of aggravating factors.  Finally, we reveal for the first time the extent to which capital prosecutions are dominated by men — including judges, elected district attorneys, defense attorneys, and juror forepersons.

We present our data against the backdrop of prevalent theories that seek to explain both the rarity of women’s executions and the reasons why certain women are singled out for the harshest punishment provided by law.  We explain why those frameworks are inadequate to understand the role that systemic gender bias plays in women’s capital prosecutions.  We conclude by arguing for more nuanced research that embraces the complexities in women’s capital cases and accounts for the presence of systemic and intersectional discrimination. 

Noting 2024 death sentencing trends in a number of notable states

As 2024 winds down, I have seen a few notable press pieces highlighting death sentencing (and execution) trends in a few notable states.  Because the long-term fate and future of capital punishment in the US largely turns on death sentencing trends, I will highlight that part of these stories in the excerpts below:

From Alabama, "Steve Marshall proud Alabama leads US in executions, despite backlash"

The [Death Penalty Information Center] reported of the 26 people newly sentenced to death in 2024, four were inmates in Alabama.  Over 40 percent of 2024’s new death sentences occurred in Alabama or Florida, the only states in which non-unanimous juries may impose capital punishment.  Nine of these eleven death sentences were non-unanimous decisions.

From Florida: "Executions in Florida dropped in 2024, but number of new death sentences lead nation"

But even as Florida carried out only one execution this year, the seven death sentences handed out by juries topped all states, edging out Texas’ second-place total of six.  About one-third of the 26 new death sentences imposed nationwide came from non-unanimous juries, including six in Florida. Last year, DeSantis enacted legislation which reduced the number of votes needed to recommend a death sentence from unanimous to eight-out-of-12 jurors.

From Oklahoma, "As Oklahoma Executions Continue, New Death Sentences Grow Rare"

Oklahoma’s death row is dwindling with each execution.  No state court has imposed a death sentence since May 13, 2022, when a Tulsa County judge followed a jury’s recommendation and sentenced David Ware to death for the murder of Tulsa Police Sgt. Craig Johnson....  The nearly 1,000-day stretch without a new death sentence is Oklahoma’s longest since at least 1974, according to data compiled by the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that does not take a position on the death penalty but describes itself as critical of how it’s administered. 

From Texas, "Texas ranked second in executions carried out in 2024, behind Alabama"

The six new death sentences handed down by Texas juries this year were double the number handed down last year. Still, the long-term trend is of decline. "Death sentences peaked in this state in 1999, when juries sent 48 people to death row," [Kristin Houlé] Cuellar said. "For the last decade, death sentences have remained in the single digits every year."

Rounding up some reactions to Prez Biden's decision to commute 37 federal death sentences

Prez Biden's decision to commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 convicted murderers on federal death row to life without of parole is remarkable for many reasons.  Thus, it is not surprising that many people are remarking about the decision.  Here is an abridged round up of just some of the reactions catching my this morning:

From the AP, "Relief, defiance, anger: Families and advocates react to Biden’s death row commutations"

From The Atlantic, "Joe Biden’s Moral Wisdom"

From Fox News, "Family of murdered SC woman rages at Biden for commuting killer's death sentence: 'She was shown no mercy'"

From The Hill, "Biden did the right thing granting clemency to 37 federal death row inmates"

From MS-NBC, "Joe Biden's justifiable mercy"

From the New York Daily News, "Trump slams Biden for commuting death sentences of 37 federal prisoners"

From the Sacramento Bee, "Joe Biden’s inconsistent commutations: Hate is a crime, but apparently not for all"

From USA Today, "'A mistake': Biden faces backlash upon commuting sentences of death row inmates"

From 10TV (Columbus, Ohio), "'Absolutely devastating': Parents react to Biden's commutation of death sentence for man who killed their son"

Prior recent related posts:

• A few legal musings about the prospect of Prez Biden commuting all federal capital sentences 
• Prez Biden commutes to LWOP the federal death sentences of 37 murderers

Prez Biden commutes to LWOP the federal death sentences of 37 murderers

As reported in this AP piece, "President Joe Biden announced on Monday that he is commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment just weeks before President-elect Donald Trump, an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office." Here is more:

The move spares the lives of people convicted in killings, including the slayings of police and military officers, people on federal land and those involved in deadly bank robberies or drug deals, as well as the killings of guards or prisoners in federal facilities.

It means just three federal inmates are still facing execution. They are Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of life Synagogue in 2018, the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.

The White House has these releases detailing this notable clemency action: "FACT SHEET: President Biden Commutes the Sentences of 37 Individuals on Death Row" and "Statement from President Joe Biden on Federal Death Row Commutations."  The "Fact Sheet" in part discusses Prez Biden's clemency record and concludes with this notable sentence: "In the coming weeks, the President will take additional steps to provide meaningful second chances and continue to review additional pardons and commutations."  On the capital clemencies, the statement from Prez Biden is relatively short, and here it is in full:

I’ve dedicated my career to reducing violent crime and ensuring a fair and effective justice system.

Today, I am commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 individuals on federal death row to life sentences without the possibility of parole. These commutations are consistent with the moratorium my Administration has imposed on federal executions, in cases other than terrorism and hate-motivated mass murder.

Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss.

But guided by my conscience and my experience as a public defender, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Vice President, and now President, I am more convinced than ever that we must stop the use of the death penalty at the federal level. In good conscience, I cannot stand back and let a new administration resume executions that I halted.

I mused a bit in this post over the weekend about a few legal issues that could follow these commutations, and one involved whether Prez Biden might include pending capital cases in any blanket clemency effort.  It appears he did not here (though he still has four weeks with the clemency pen).

Prior recent related post:

•   A few legal musings about the prospect of Prez Biden commuting all federal capital sentences 

A few legal musings about the prospect of Prez Biden commuting all federal capital sentences

Articles published last week from the New York Times and the Washtington Post discussed campaigns urging Prez Joe Biden to commute the capital sentences of all convicted murderers on federal death row.  Now the Wall Street Journal has this new "exclusive" report, headlined "Biden Weighs Commuting Sentences of Death Row Inmates," which gets started this way:

President Biden is considering commuting the sentences of most, if not all, of the 40 men on the federal government’s death row, people familiar with the matter said, a move that would frustrate President-elect Donald Trump’s ability to resume the rapid pace of executions that marked his first term....

A decision from the president could come by Christmas, some of the people said.  A principal question is whether the president should issue a blanket commutation of all the condemned men, or whether death sentences should remain for the most heinous convicts, these people said. 

According to the WSJ, "Attorney General Merrick Garland ... has recommended that Biden commute all but a handful of the sentences, ... excepting a few terrorism and hate-crimes cases."  Also notable, as reported in this Vatican News story, is broader advocacy from the Pope:

Pope Francis and US President Joe Biden spoke with each other in a phone call overnight on 19 December....  The two leaders discussed "efforts to advance peace around the world during the holiday season," according to a White House statement....  The President "also graciously accepted His Holiness Pope Francis’s invitation to visit the Vatican next month."  In a subsequent statement, the White House press secretary noted Biden will be in Rome from 9-12 January [and that] the audience with the Pope is scheduled for 10 January....

One of the issues that is particularly close to the Pope's heart is the fate of prisoners on death row.... The Pope has described the death penalty as an act "at odds with Christian faith" and one that "eliminates all hope for forgiveness and rehabilitation."  During the Angelus on the Feast of the Immaculate Conception on 8 December, the Holy Father called on the faithful to "pray for the prisoners who are on death row in the United States."...  "Let us pray," he said, "that their sentence be commuted, changed.  Let us think of these brothers and sisters of ours and ask the Lord for the grace to save them from death."  

I have been expecting Prez Biden to commute at least a few capital sentences on his way out of the Oval Office.  Prez Obama commuted two death sentences during his last week in office, and capital clemency has a rich modern history at the state level.  But these press reports have me thinking blanket or near-blanket commutation for all of federal death row is a real possibility and perhaps real soon (though maybe not until just before or just after Prez Biden meets with the Pope).  Though I will leave it to others to discuss the morality and the politics of blanket federal capital commutations, I wanted to muse here about a few legal matters:

1.  Because there are some pending federal capital prosecutions, including 9/11 terrorists at GTMO and the racist mass shooter who murdered 10 in Buffalo (and perhaps also even the recent murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO), an effort to preclude all possible future executions might need to include murderers beyond those already sentenced to death.  There are ways to write up a broad clemency order that would apply to all pending cases, and it will be interesting to see if anti-capital commutations extend to pending cases as well as past ones.

2.  Because broad federal capital commutations will surely be controversial, I wonder if any states could or would try to secure death sentences for murderers spared by Prez Biden.  For example, I believe Pennsylvania held state capital charges in abeyance while DOJ sought and secured a federal capital sentence for the Tree of Life Synagogue mass murderer.  Were this mass murderer to escape a federal capital sentence, perhaps state capital charges would begin again.  Practically, I suspect there are only a very few cases in which a state could pursue their own capital charges (and a number of federal capital defendants committed murders in states without the death penalty).  

3.  Because broad federal capital commutations will surely be controversial, I wonder if the future Trump Department of Justice might explore the possibility of capital reprosecutions.  That might sound peculiar, but the Biden Department of Justice pursued unresolved fraud charges against Philip Esformes after his prison sentence had been commuted by Prez Trump.  Many folks expressed concern about what seemed like an end-run around a presidential clemency grant; I had the honor of testifying at a congressional hearing on the topic, and I've been deeply concerned about a new norm of future administrations looking for ways to undo some past clemency grants.  Practically, I suspect reprosecution efforts unlikely, especially if Prez Biden leaves some murderers on federal death row, but I am still grumpy the Biden DOJ created a precedent for doing so.

4.  Because federal capital commutations will be, presumably, to a term of imprisonment of life, it could be possible for the recipients to seek a future reduction of their prison sentence thanks to a key provision of the First Step Act signed into law by Prez Trump.  Specifically, 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c) now provides authority for a judge to "reduce the term of imprisonment" on a defendant's motion when certain (fairly stringent) conditions are met.  Though I can imagine viable arguments that murderers serving LWOP-commuted-death sentences are categorically ineligible for so-called "compassionate release," I still would expect some (many?) of those who get death sentences commuted to, at some point, try to also get their imprisonment term reduced.

Death Penalty Information Center releases its annual year-end report, "The Death Penalty in 2024"

The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) has a tradition, following the final scheduled execution of a calendar year, of releasing a year-end report with lots of data and other information about capital punishment's administration in the US.  DPIC is critical of problems in the application of the death penalty, and its annual report is often styled to suggest the death penalty is in decline; that has not changed this year even though the total number of death sentences and executions ticked up slightly in 2024.  This year's report is fully titled "The Death Penalty in 2024: Death Sentences and Executions Remain Near Historic Lows Amid Growing Concerns about Fairness and Innocence," and here is its executive summary:

The num­ber of new death sen­tences in 2024 increased from 2023, with 26. The num­ber of peo­ple on death row across the United States has con­tin­ued to decline from a peak pop­u­la­tion in the year 2000.

Public sup­port for the death penal­ty remains at a five-decade low (53%) and Gallup’s recent polling reveals that more than half of young U.S. adults ages 18 through 43 now oppose the death penal­ty. Fewer peo­ple found the death penal­ty moral­ly accept­able this year (55%) than last year (60%).

Significant media atten­tion, pub­lic protest, and sup­port from unlike­ly allies in the cas­es of Marcellus ​“Khaliifah” Williams, Robert Roberson, and Richard Glossip ele­vat­ed the issue of inno­cence in 2024, as the United States marked the mile­stone of 200 death row exonerations.

No indi­vid­ual death-sen­tenced per­son received clemen­cy in 2024, the first year since 2016 with­out any clemen­cy grants. At least two mass clemen­cy cam­paigns are pending decisions.

Death penal­ty-relat­ed leg­is­la­tion was enact­ed in at least six states to lim­it use of the death penal­ty, alter exe­cu­tion meth­ods or pro­to­cols, mod­i­fy pro­ce­dures, and increase secre­cy. Abolition efforts con­tin­ue in more than a dozen states, and efforts to rein­tro­duce the death penal­ty in eight states failed. Only one effort to expand the death penal­ty to non-homi­cide crimes was successful.

The 1600th exe­cu­tion in the mod­ern death penal­ty era occurred in September 2024. The num­ber of peo­ple exe­cut­ed in 2024 remained near­ly the same as 2023, with 25 exe­cu­tions occur­ring in nine states. This was the tenth con­sec­u­tive year with few­er than 30 exe­cu­tions. Utah, South Carolina, and Indiana con­duct­ed their first exe­cu­tions after more than a decade hia­tus. Alabama became the first state to use nitro­gen gas to execute prisoners.

The United States Supreme Court has large­ly aban­doned the crit­i­cal role it has his­tor­i­cal­ly played in reg­u­lat­ing and lim­it­ing use of the death penalty.

The death penal­ty has been abol­ished in prac­tice or in law in a major­i­ty of coun­tries around the world (144), and 2024 saw legal abo­li­tion efforts progress in four more coun­tries. Despite this, glob­al exe­cu­tions increased in 2024 for the third straight year, led by Iran.

The full report includes lots more interesting capital punishment administration data and other information. I am always grateful for the detail accounting DPIC of death sentences that DPIC maintains (and I will there was a comparable resource for LWOP sentences).

Oklahoma completes last (and 25th) execution in the US for 2024

As reported in this AP piece, an "Oklahoma man who killed a 10-year-old girl in a cannibalistic fantasy died by lethal injection Thursday in the nation’s 25th and final execution of the year."  Here is more:

Kevin Ray Underwood was pronounced dead at 10:14 a.m. at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester, state Department of Corrections spokesperson Lance West said. It was Oklahoma’s fourth execution of the year, and it took place on Underwood’s 45th birthday. Oklahoma uses a three-drug lethal injection process that begins with the sedative midazolam followed by a second drug that paralyzes the inmate and a third that stops their heart.

Underwood, a former grocery store worker, was sentenced to die for killing Jamie Rose Bolin in 2006. Underwood admitted to luring Jamie into his apartment and beating her over the head with a cutting board before suffocating and sexually assaulting her. He told investigators that he nearly beheaded Jamie in his bathtub before abandoning his plans to eat her....

Underwood’s attorneys had argued that he deserved to be spared the death penalty because of his long history of abuse and serious mental health issues that included autism, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar and panic disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, schizotypal personality disorder and various deviant sexual paraphilias. Prosecutors argued that many people suffer from mental illness, but that doesn’t justify harming children.

With two executions this week (this one and one in Indiana), a bit of recent death penalty history has been made.  It's been more than a quarter century since the US has had two executions this close to Christmas.  In addition, 25 total executions for the year equals the most for a single year in the US since 2015.

Indiana completes execution of mass murderer, its first since 2009

As reported in this USA Today article, "Indiana has executed its first inmate in 15 years, as Joseph Edward Corcoran was declared dead before sunrise on Wednesday morning." Here is more:

Corcoran, 49, was convicted in 1999 for the 1997 quadruple murder of his older brother, sister's fiancé and their two friends. He committed the homicides with a semi-automatic rifle, and at the home he lived in with his older sister and brother in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Corcoran, who was 22 at the time, killed his brother, 30-year-old James Corcoran; his sister's fiancé, 32-year-old Robert Scott Turner; and their two friends, 30-year-old Timothy Bricker and 30-year-old Douglas Stillwell.

Before Corcoran's execution, his attorneys filed a request at the Indiana Supreme Court asking them to consider his client's competency due to his paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis in 1999. The court denied the attorneys' request on Dec. 5....

Corcoran died at 12:44 a.m. CST after being given a lethal dose of pentobarbital.... After the execution, Gov, Eric Holcomb said, "Joseph Corcoran’s case has been reviewed repeatedly over the last 25 years — including 7 times by the Indiana Supreme Court and 3 times by the U.S. Supreme Court, the most recent of which was tonight. His sentence has never been overturned and was carried out as ordered by the court.”

Noting the shrinking of death row in Missouri and elsewhere

This new AP piece details some notable capital punishment data from the Show Me state and eleswhere.  This article's headline notes its themes: "Missouri's death row had nearly 100 inmates in the 1990s. Now, it has eight."  Here are excerpts (with links from the original):

Missouri 's status as one of the most active death penalty states is about to change for one simple reason: The state is running out of inmates to execute.

The lethal injection of Christopher Collings on Dec. 3 left just eight men on death row — a figurative term since condemned Missouri inmates are housed with other prisoners. By contrast, nearly 100 people were living with a death sentence three decades ago.

Three of the eight Missouri inmates will almost certainly live out their lives in prison after being declared mentally incompetent for execution.  Court appeals continue for the other five, and no new executions are scheduled.

Missouri isn’t alone. Across the nation, the number of people awaiting the ultimate punishment has declined sharply since the turn of the century....

The Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row USA report showed 2,180 people with pending death sentences this year, down from 3,682 in 2000. Missouri’s peak year was 1997, when 96 people were on death row.

After reaching a height of 98 U.S. executions in 1999, the annual number hasn’t topped 30 since 2014.  So far this year, 23 executions have been carried out — six in Alabama, five in Texas, four in Missouri, three in Oklahoma, two in South Carolina and one each in Georgia, Utah and Florida.  Two more are scheduled: Wednesday in Indiana and Thursday in Oklahoma.

Use of the death penalty has declined in part because many states have turned away from it.  Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have abolished the punishment, and five others have moratoriums.

Even in active death penalty states, prosecutors in murder cases are far more inclined to seek life in prison without parole.  In the 1990s, the nation was typically seeing over 300 new death sentences each year. By contrast, 21 people were sentenced to death nationwide in 2023.

Missouri completes execution "only" 17 years after child murder

As reported in this AP article, Missouri this evening completed an execution of a man who sexually assaulted and strangled a 9-year-old girl in 2007. Here are some of the details:

Rowan Ford knew Christopher Collings as “Uncle Chris” after he spent several months living with her family. On Tuesday, Collings was executed for sexually assaulting and killing the child, then dumping her body in a sinkhole outside a small Missouri town.

Collings, 49, was put to death with a single dose of pentobarbital on Tuesday evening at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri. The execution was the 23rd in the U.S. this year and the fourth in Missouri. Only Alabama with six and Texas with five have performed more executions in 2024....

Collings’ fate was sealed Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court turned aside an appeal and Republican Gov. Mike Parson denied clemency.... Parson, in a statement, said he hopes that “all those who knew and loved Rowan may find peace in knowing that justice has been done.”

Rowan was a fourth-grader described by teachers at Collings’ trial as a hard-working and happy student, a lover of Barbie who had her room painted pink. Collings was a friend of Rowan’s stepfather, David Spears, and lived for several months in 2007 at the home Rowan shared with her mother, Colleen Munson, and Spears. Collings sometimes helped Rowan with her homework.

Collings told authorities that he drank heavily and smoked marijuana with Spears and another man in the hours before the attack on Rowan, according to court records. Collings said he picked up the still-sleeping child from her bed, took her to the camper where he lived, and assaulted her. Collings planned to take Rowan back home, leading her outside the camper facing away from him so that she couldn’t identify him, he said in his confession. But when moonlight lit up the darkness, Rowan was able to see Collings, he told police. He said he “freaked out,” grabbed a rope from a nearby pickup truck, and strangled her.

Given that modern average times between death sentences and executions is now about 20 years, it seems notable that Missouri completed this execution "only" 17 years after the offense.

New DPIC resource: "In Era of Secrecy, States Increasingly Restrict Media Access to Executions"

A helpful reder made sure I did not mean that the Death Penalty Information Center recently posted on its website this new resource titled "In Era of Secrecy, States Increasingly Restrict Media Access to Executions." Here is how the lengthy discussion gets started:  

On December 18, Joseph Corcoran is scheduled to be the first person executed by Indiana officials in 15 years.  For the first time, the state will use a single drug, pentobarbital, which comes from an unknown source and has been known to cause prisoners “excruciating” pain during executions.  But no media witnesses will be present to relay what happens to the public. Indiana is an outlier in its policy decision to completely exclude the press from witnessing executions in the state.  But a survey by the Death Penalty Information Center finds that many states now significantly restrict whether and how members of the press may observe and document the execution process.

Unobstructed media access to executions is critical because the media observes what the public cannot.  States generally prohibit citizens from attending executions, so the media becomes the public’s watchdog, providing important information about how the government is following the law and using taxpayer funds.  “We’re the ones that are there as the eyes and ears of the public, and we’re there to ensure that the state does it correctly,” said Rhonda Cook, a reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who has witnessed 28 executions.  Without journalists seeing and hearing every step of the process, the public can only rely on official state accounts, which often refuse to acknowledge problems regardless of the evidence.

Alabama completes its third execution using nitrogen gas, its sixth of 2024

As detailed in this lengthy local story, "Alabama executed Carey Dale Grayson for the 1994 brutal slaying and mutilation of a hitchhiker in Jefferson County on Thursday evening, making it the state’s sixth execution in 2024."  Here are some details:

Earlier Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for 50-year-old Grayson to be killed using the relatively new method of pumping nitrogen gas into a mask fitted over an inmate’s face and suffocating him to death.... Grayson used his last words to curse the warden in charge of the prison.

Grayson was convicted with three other men -- all teenagers at the time -- for the murder and mutilation of 37-year-old Vicki Lynn Deblieux. The woman had been hitchhiking when she was picked up by the group of teenagers. Her body was found days later at the base of a cliff.

Her daughter, Jodi Haley, was present at Holman prison on Thursday night.  She described her mother at a press conference following the execution. “She was unique. She was spontaneous, she was wild. She was funny and she was gorgeous to boot,” Haley said.  She said she didn’t know what it was like to have a mother while going through life events like graduation, marriage, and children -- opportunities that were stolen from her.

But Haley also focused on Grayson and her stance against the death penalty.  Grayson was abused “in every possible way,” including having cigarettes put out on his skin, facing physical and sexual abuse and being thrown out on the street as an adolescent, Haley said. “I have to wonder how all of this slips through the cracks of the justice system. Because society failed this man as a child and my family suffered because of it,” she said.

Haley wondered what kind of positive impact Grayson could have had on lives. The ‘eye for an eye’ justification for the death penalty “it’s not right,” Haley said. “Murdering inmates under the guise of justice needs to stop,” Haley said. “State sanctioned homicide needs never be listed as cause of death,” she said. “I don’t know who we think we are. To be in such a modern time, we regress when we implement this punishment. I hope and pray my mother’s death will invoke these changes and give her senseless death some purpose,” Haley said....

The prison warden read the death warrant and pointed the microphone to Grayson’s face to utter his last words, but then immediately backed off after Grayson said, “For you, you need to f*** off.” Grayson, at one point, also pointed up the middle finger on at least his left hand, which was visible to media witnesses. “He’s cussed out most of our employees tonight so we were not going to give him the opportunity to spew that profanity,” said Commissioner John Hamm on why the warden took away the microphone....

Grayson continued leaning his head forward following his remarks and said something in a loud manner towards what appeared the middle execution viewing room, where state officials usually sit, as a guard hung the microphone up and the warden went into a separate room to begin the execution.

The gas apparently started flowing at 6:12 p.m., followed by Grayson gasping and raising, shaking his head left to right. About 6:14 p.m., both of his legs on the gurney raised up. His movements slowed, but he had what appeared to be periodic gasps over the following six minutes when he stopped moving.  At a press conference following the execution, Hamm said the first movements Grayson was doing were “all show” and the later movements were consistent with nitrogen gas executions.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey issued a press release following the execution, listing his time of death as 6:33 p.m. She said in a press release, “Some thirty years ago, Vicki DeBlieux’s journey to her mother’s house and ultimately, her life, were horrifically cut short because of Carey Grayson and three other men. She sensed something was wrong, attempted to escape, but instead, was brutally tortured and murdered. Even after her death, Mr. Grayson’s crimes against Ms. DeBlieux were heinous, unimaginable, without an ounce of regard for human life and just unexplainably mean. An execution by nitrogen hypoxia bares no comparison to the death and dismemberment Ms. DeBlieux experienced. I pray for her loved ones that they may continue finding closure and healing.”...

Deblieux was kidnapped while hitchhiking from Chattanooga to see her mother in Louisiana. She accepted a ride from Grayson, Kenny Loggins, Trace Duncan, and Louis Mangione on the Trussville exit of Interstate 59 on Feb. 22, 1994. Deblieux’s nude and dismembered body was found four days later at the bottom of a cliff on Bald Rock Mountain in St. Clair County.

Court records show after picking up the woman, the teens took her to an abandoned area near Medical Center East in Birmingham, where they all drank. At some point, the teens attacked and killed Deblieux, drove her body to St. Clair County, then tossed her body and luggage off the cliff.

Given what now seems to be Alabama's repeated success with using nitrogen gas as an execution method, it will be interesting to see if other jurisdictions may make more robust efforts to adopt this method (or whether death row defendants might argue more robstly that this method must be provided as a more humane alternative to lethal injection).

Could and would the Trump Administration's Justice Department seek the death penalty for Laken Riley's murderer?

Yesterday brought not only a quick conviction, but also a quick sentencing to LWOP, in the Georgia state bench trial of the man who brutally murdered Laken Riley.  This AP story provides some basics:

The Venezuelan man convicted of killing Georgia nursing student Laken Riley has been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole in a case that became a flashpoint in the national debate over immigration.  Jose Ibarra was charged with murder and other crimes in Riley’s February death, and Wednesday’s guilty verdict was reached by Athens-Clarke County Superior Court Judge H. Patrick Haggard. Ibarra, 26, had waived his right to a jury trial, meaning Haggard alone heard and decided the case.

Haggard found Ibarra guilty of all 10 counts against him: one count of malice murder; three counts of felony murder; and one count each of kidnapping with bodily injury, aggravated assault with intent to rape, aggravated battery, obstructing an emergency call, evidence tampering and being a peeping Tom.

Prosecutors said Ibarra encountered Riley while she was running on the University of Georgia campus on Feb. 22 and killed her during a struggle.  Riley, 22, was a student at Augusta University College of Nursing, which also has a campus in Athens, about 70 miles (115 kilometers) east of Atlanta.

Riley’s family and friends tearfully remembered her and asked Haggard to sentence Ibarra to the maximum penalty. Her mother, Allyson Phillips, said there is “no end to the pain, suffering and loss we have experienced and will continue to endure.”  “This sick, twisted and evil coward showed no regard for Laken or human life. We are asking that the same be done for him,” she told the judge.

Riley’s younger sister, Lauren Phillips, a freshman at the University of Georgia, talked about the pain of living without her “favorite person” and “biggest role model” and the effect her sister’s death has had on her. “I cannot walk around my own college campus because I’m terrified of people like Jose Ibarra,” she said....

Defense attorney John Donnelly asked Haggard to give Ibarra two consecutive life sentences but to allow him the eventual possibility of parole.  Prosecutor Sheila Ross asked the judge for the maximum sentence, saying Riley’s family should never have to worry about Ibarra being released. “You can’t bring her back and it’s horrible. What you can do is give comfort with your sentence,” Ross said.

Haggard ultimately gave Ibarra the maximum sentence he could impose, including life in prison without the possibility of parole on the malice murder count.

Riley’s killing added fuel to the national debate over immigration when federal authorities said Ibarra illegally entered the U.S. in 2022 and was allowed to stay in the country while he pursued his immigration case. President-elect Donald Trump and other Republicans blamed Riley’s death on the policies of Democratic President Joe Biden....

The trial began Friday, and prosecutors called more than a dozen law enforcement officers, Riley’s roommates and a woman who lived in the same apartment as Ibarra. Defense attorneys called a police officer, a jogger and one of Ibarra’s neighbors on Tuesday and rested their case Wednesday morning.

This Newsweek article, headlined "Why Laken Riley's Killer Isn't Facing Death Penalty in Georgia," explains that the "Western Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office announced before Ibarra's trial that it would not seek the death penalty. District Attorney Deborah Gonzalez, a progressive Democrat, faced criticism from Republicans over the decision."  I have seen this criticism being expressed in a number of commentary pieces today:

Via The Federalist, "Not Giving Laken Riley’s Killer The Death Penalty Is A Miscarriage Of Justice"

Via Fox News, "Laken Riley's murderer deserves the death penalty"

Via the National Legal and Policy Center, "Failure to Seek Death Penalty in Laken Riley Case is ‘Miscarriage of Justice’"

These reactions and claims that justice has not been served by a sentence less than death for this murderer leads me to the question that is the title of this post.  I suspect that clever lawyers at the Department of Justice could find a hook for a federal prosecution of this horrific murder, and the dual sovereignty doctrine clearly allows the federal government to pursue its distinct interests after Georgia's prosecution.  So I believe the US Justice Department could at least try to pursue a capital prosecution in this case, and thus the real question is whether it might decide it should.  

The Justice Department's so-called "Petite Policy" generally suggests limits on federal prosecutions after state prosecutions based on whether there is a "substantial federal interest" that was not vindicated by a state prosecution.  Though I am fairly certain the current Biden Administration will not see an interest in a follow-up federal prosecution just to seek a capital verdict, I suspect whatever new leaders Prez-Elect Donald Trump gets into DOJ could have a quite different view.

Washington Post details that so many death sentence are functionally LWOP sentences

The Washington Post has this lengthy new article discussing the state of capital punishment administration and death rows in the US. The piece's full headline previews its themes: "Between Life and Death: More than 2,100 people sit on American death rows. Will most of them die there waiting to be executed?".  Here are excerpts:

Across the nation, more than half of the approximately 2,100 prisoners with death sentences are incarcerated in jurisdictions where executions are on hold, according to a Washington Post analysis. Many appear likely to die without seeing the inside of an execution chamber....

Many inmates on death row nationwide and scores of others affected by their cases — including victims’ loved ones — have been left in a state of limbo that can stretch on indefinitely, raising fundamental questions about the American justice system....

Supporters of capital punishment say that leaving death sentences unfulfilled lets horrific crimes go unpunished and misleads victims’ loved ones. Opponents of the practice also decry leaving prisoners on death row endlessly, saying that perpetuates a system they call unjust and cruel.

“In a courtroom, they have said, ‘This is the sentence,’” said Duffie Stone, an elected prosecutor in South Carolina who has successfully sought the death penalty in court. “For that sentence not to mean what it says calls our criminal justice system into question.”...

Nearly 80 percent of prisoners sentenced to death — 1,681 people — are held in eight states, five of which are not currently carrying out executions.

Governors have imposed moratoriums in California (which has 612 death row inmates) and Pennsylvania (95). In Arizona (111), executions were paused after the governor ordered a review of the state’s procedures for carrying them out. And the governor in Ohio (114) has said executions there were paused because of a lack of execution drugs. In North Carolina (136), a court order blocks executions.

Florida, Texas and Alabama, which regularly carry out executions, hold a total of 613 people on death row.

New Prison Policy Initiative briefing urges outgoing governors and Prez to grant capital clemency

The Prison Policy Initiative is aparently okay with one group of prisoners potentially spending longer in prison, as it has this new briefing urging clemency action to take condemned murderers off death row.  The themes of the briefing is spelled out in the full title: "Talking turkey about the death penalty: outgoing governors and the president must use their clemency power now: President Biden and three governors should use their clemency powers before they leave office to save the lives of people facing the death penalty, our nation’s cruelest punishment."  Here is how the report gets started:

Every November, it has become a light-hearted tradition for the president and some governors to “pardon” turkeys before the Thanksgiving holiday, sparing them from the dinner table. But when the nation’s political leaders take part in an annual turkey pardon, it’s hard not to think about the chronic underuse of clemency powers across the U.S., especially for people on death row.

If turkey pardons are about choosing life over death, using clemency powers to empty remaining death rows is a straightforward way for elected leaders to act on those values and reject a horrific practice. President Biden and the outgoing governors of North Carolina, Indiana, and Missouri in particular can use clemency for those facing a state-sanctioned death before they leave office early next year. More than a dozen other governors can stop executions in their states, too, by exercising their unilateral power to modify or reduce criminal convictions and sentences at any time.

In this briefing, we show that the outgoing president and some governors’ tactless traditions of granting relief to turkeys casts a harsh light on their records of granting relief to people condemned to die. Ultimately, their legacies won’t be shaped by crass Thanksgiving rituals, but by how they tapped their power to intervene in the moral atrocity that is the death penalty.

After prior stay, Texas Supreme Court rules state legislature lacked a lawful basis to impede execution

As reported in this AP piece, the "Texas Supreme Court on Friday ruled that a legislative subpoena cannot stop an execution after Republican and Democratic lawmakers who say Robert Roberson is innocent used the novel maneuver to pause his execution at the last minute." Here is more about the ruling and context:

The ruling clears the way for Roberson’s execution to move forward, weeks after a bipartisan group of state House lawmakers bought him more time by subpoenaing Roberson as he waited to be taken to the nation’s busiest death chamber.  Roberson was sentenced to death in 2003 for killing his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki Curtis.  He would be the first person in the United States to be executed over a conviction tied to “shaken baby syndrome,” a diagnosis that has been questioned by some medical experts.

A new execution date for Roberson has not been set, but it is certain to proceed unless Republican Gov. Greg Abbott grants a 30-day reprieve.  Abbott did not move to do so before Roberson’s original execution date and his office challenged the subpoena tactic used by lawmakers, accusing them of overstepping their power.

The state’s all-Republican high court agreed, ruling that “under these circumstances the committee’s authority to compel testimony does not include the power to override the scheduled legal process leading to an execution,” wrote Republican Justice Evan Young, issuing the opinion of the court.

The ruling addressed a subpoena issued for Roberson by the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee.  Roberson was scheduled to die by lethal injection on Oct. 17 when lawmakers, in a last-ditch effort, issued a subpoena to have him testify at the Texas Capitol days after his planned execution.  This spurred a legal conundrum between the state’s criminal and civil courts, which ultimately led to the Texas Supreme Court temporarily ruling in Roberson’s favor while it considered the matter.

Roberson has gained bipartisan support from lawmakers and medical experts who say he was convicted on faulty evidence of “shaken baby syndrome,” which refers to a serious brain injury caused when a child’s head is hurt through shaking or some other violent impact, like being slammed against a wall or thrown on the floor.

Rep. Joe Moody, who has led the effort to stop Roberson’s execution, said delaying the execution with the subpoena was “never our specific intention” and added that the court “rightly agreed” that the subpoena and lawsuit were valid. Moody insisted that Roberson could still be called to testify since the court ruling “reinforced our belief that the Committee can indeed obtain Mr. Roberson’s testimony and made clear it expects the executive branch of government to accommodate us in doing so.”

Prosecutors said that Roberson killed his daughter by shaking her violently back and forth.  Roberson’s attorneys have argued that the child’s symptoms did not align with child abuse and that she likely died from complications with severe pneumonia.  His case has garnered support from nearly 90 lawmakers across party lines and civil rights advocates who say Roberson is innocent and that he has not been given a fair trial under the state’s “junk science law.”...

The parole board voted to not recommend clemency for Roberson before his scheduled execution date, and the governor’s office said lawmakers had stepped out of line when they issued the subpoena.

The full 30-page ruling from the Texas Supreme Court is available at this link.  It is my understanding of Texas law that a new execution date cannot be set less than 90 days out from the date of its request, so it would seem Robertson could not be secheduled for execution February 2025.

Prior related post:

• Amid serious claims of innocence, Texas Supreme Court halts execution based on legislative subpoena 

Gallup reports "lowest levels of death penalty support" since 1972 (but still majority support)

This new Gallup piece, headlined "Drop in Death Penalty Support Led by Younger Generations: Less than half of millennials, Gen Z are in favor of it for convicted murderers," reports on its latest survey data concerning views on capital punishment.  Here are excerpts:

Younger generations of U.S. adults are far less likely than older generations to favor the death penalty for convicted murderers. As a result, overall support for the death penalty in the U.S. has fallen to 53% today, a level not seen since the early 1970s.

Less than half of U.S. adults born after 1980 -- those in the millennial and Generation Z birth cohorts -- favor the death penalty. At the same time, roughly six in 10 adults in older generations are in favor of such laws. Two decades ago, there were no meaningful age differences in views of the death penalty.

These results are based on aggregated data from Gallup’s annual Crime survey, which dates back to the year 2000. This analysis focuses on three time periods during which death penalty support was relatively stable -- 2000 through 2006 (when an average of 66% of U.S. adults were in favor of the death penalty), 2010 through 2016 (61%) and 2020 through 2024 (54%). The last period reflects the lowest levels of death penalty support Gallup has measured since a 50% reading in 1972.

Two decades ago, all generations’ support for the death penalty was within three percentage points of the 66% national average. At that time, the oldest millennials had entered adulthood. Between 2010 and 2016, support among adult millennials had fallen from 63% to 56%, while it dipped only slightly, to 63% or 64%, among the older generations.

In the most recent period, millennials again show diminished support, dropping another nine points to 47% in favor of the death penalty. Members of Generation X, baby boomers and the Silent Generation all show slight declines over the past decade, ranging from two to five points. Now that many in Generation Z (currently aged 12 to 27) have become adults, this subgroup is proving even less supportive of the death penalty than millennials are, at 42%....

As Gallup showed in last year’s death penalty update, the percentage of Republicans in favor of the death penalty has generally held steady over the past 25 years. The change in attitudes by generational group is thus seen more among political independents and, especially, Democrats. To analyze changes in death penalty support among generations in different party groups, the two younger (Gen Z and millennial) and three older (Gen X, baby boom and Silent) birth cohorts are combined to increase the reliability of the subgroup estimates. Even so, there are not sufficiently large sample sizes of Gen Zers and millennials in the 2000-2006 time period, before most had reached adulthood, to produce estimates for party subgroups of those generations.

Decreased death penalty support was first apparent among Democrats in older generations. Between 2000 and 2006, 57% of Democrats in Generation X or above favored the death penalty. Ten years later, support among this group had dropped to 49%, and it is at 38% in the most recent period. Younger Democrats -- those in Gen Z and millennials -- show an even larger drop in the past decade, from 45% to 27%.

Among political independents, those in Generation X or above showed steady support for the death penalty between the early 2000s and early 2010s, but that has dropped modestly since then, from 64% to 58%. The change among younger independents has been larger, from 55% to 45%.

While older Republicans’ views have not changed to a meaningful degree, there has been a slight decline in death penalty support over the past decade among younger Republicans, from 73% to 69%.

As a result of these changes, there are now double-digit gaps in death penalty support between people with the same political party identification from different generations. For example, 38% of Democrats and 82% of Republicans in older generations versus 27% of younger Democrats and 69% of younger Republicans, respectively, favor the death penalty.

It will be interesting to see if and how the incoming Trump Administration, which seems likely to advocate for capital punishment in various way, might have some impact on these public opinion trends.

New Death Penalty Information Center report presents critical account of federal death penalty history

The Death Penalty Information Center has today released this new report titled "Fool’s Gold: How the Federal Death Penalty Has Perpetuated Racially Discriminatory Practices Throughout History."  The title leaves little doubt about the tone and leanings of the report, and here is its executive summary to the same effect (which only appears online and not in the full report):

In 2020, President Joe Biden promised to end the federal death penalty during his administration and his Attorney General, Merrick Garland, acknowledged its many longstanding concerns as reasons to pause federal executions pending an internal review of Department of Justice policies and practices. Project 2025, the product of a political conservative movement, calls for President Trump to “obtain finality” for all federal death row prisoners. Before any decision about future use of the federal death penalty is made, it is critically important to understand its history and the serious flaws in the way it is used today. Although sometimes referred to as the “gold standard” of capital punishment, an analysis of the federal death penalty reveals that it is plagued by the same serious problems as state level capital punishment systems.

The federal death penalty has been used disproportionately against people of color: to subjugate Native Americans Resisting Colonization, and to intimidate and terrorize newly freed Black Americans.

Before the start of the Civil War, the federal death penalty was used primarily against white men. After slavery was abolished and the U.S. continued its westward expansion, however, the demographics of those executed shifted. At least 58 Native Americans were executed by the federal government between 1862 and 1899, with the majority killed in mass executions (defined as at least three people executed at the same time).

Black Americans were also overrepresented among those executed. Before the Civil War, 8 Black people were executed by the federal government; between 1862 and 1899, 47 Black people were federally executed — a 488% increase. Most of these executions occurred during the Reconstruction era, which also saw a dramatic rise in the extralegal lynchings of Black people....

Since the federal death penalty was reinstated in 1988, multiple studies have demonstrated that racial disparities continue to define federal capital prosecutions. The Death Penalty Information Center’s 1994 review of federal prosecutions found that “no other jurisdiction comes close to th[e] nearly 90% minority prosecution rate” seen at the federal level. A 2001 supplementary study found similarly jarring disparities, with nearly 80% of cases involving non-white defendants. A review of all federal death penalty authorizations from 1989 to June 2024 reveals that these disparities persist: 73% of all cases authorized for prosecution involved defendants of color.

Similar to use of the death penalty at the state levels, statistics suggest that there is a correlation between the race and gender of a victim and a federal death sentence. Defendants who killed white female victims receive the death penalty at a substantially higher rate than defendants whose victims were not white women.

The Death Penalty Information Center website all has this accounting of "Five Facts To Know About the Federal Death Penalty."

"Preserving Precedent on Capital Mitigation"

The title of this post is the title of this new essay authored by Jesse Cheng now available via SSRN.  Here is its abstract:

In the Court's recent decision in United States v. Tsarnaev, Justice Thomas appears to be planting the seeds for overturning longstanding precedent in death penalty trial procedure.  A line of cases on capital mitigation — evidence in favor of sparing the life of a criminal defendant facing the death penalty — has both expanded the scope of mitigating evidence and afforded wide latitude to sentencing decision-makers when evaluating this evidence.  The Essay asserts that in opposing this line of cases, Justice Thomas improperly ignores the procedural safeguard function that mitigation's deliberative liberties serve at a capital trial.  This safeguard function is indispensable: even with it in place, the existing system has produced convictions and death sentences of innocent individuals, some of whom have likely been executed.  The Essay casts a much-needed spotlight on the logic of mitigation as procedural safeguard, arguing that any attempt to overturn precedent must explain why this logic and its aspiration to heightened reliability no longer apply when it comes to the nation's ultimate punishment.

What might the second Trump term mean for the death penalty?

The question in the title of this post defies any quick analyses, especially since there may be a number of different stories to unpack related to death penaly law (both constitutional and statuory) and death penalty administration (prosecutions, sentences and executions).  In addition, though a President and his Justice Department can have the most direct impact on federal capital punishment, there are also various ways that federal officials (and federal politics) can impact state capital justice systems.  And yet, all these nuances aside, we can still simply matters by saying a second Trump term likely means more use of, and attention on, the death penalty.

This lengthy new NBC article, headlined "Trump wants to expand the federal death penalty, setting up legal challenges in second term," overview some the federal capital punishment issues.  Here are excerpts:

Throughout his campaign, President-elect Donald Trump signaled he would resume federal executions if he won and make more people eligible for capital punishment, including child rapists, migrants who kill U.S. citizens and law enforcement officers, and those convicted of drug and human trafficking....

While it remains unclear how Trump would act to expand the death penalty, anti-death penalty groups and criminal justice reform advocates say they are taking his claims seriously, noting the spree of federal executions that occurred during his first term....

At the tail end of Trump’s first term, 13 federal inmates were put to death — even as the pandemic led states to halt executions because of Covid concerns in prisons. The cases included the first woman executed by the federal government in nearly 70 years; the youngest person based on the age when the crime occurred (18 at the time of his arrest); and the only Native American on federal death row.

No president had overseen as many federal executions since Grover Cleveland in the late 1800s, and the U.S. government had not executed anyone for more than 15 years until Trump revived the practice.  His then-attorney general, William Barr, had said that the federal government “owed it to victims to carry out the sentence imposed by the justice system.”

President Joe Biden had campaigned on passing legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, but pulled back on that in office. Instead, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced a moratorium in 2021 to review the federal execution protocols....  Meanwhile, the Justice Department under Biden and Garland has not sought the death penalty in federal cases that could have warranted it, and has even withdrawn death penalty sentences in about two dozen cases that it had inherited....

There are currently 40 inmates, all men, on federal death row, according to the nonpartisan Death Penalty Information Center. They include gunmen responsible for mass shootings in South Carolina and Pittsburgh and the man convicted in the Boston Marathon bombing....

More than 40 federal laws provide for the death penalty, with nearly all dealing with murder or an illegal act that results in death.  Whether Trump would expect federal prosecutors to seek death in cases that don’t explicitly involve murder — for instance, the rape of a child — remains to be seen, but the Death Penalty Information Center notes that a 2008 Supreme Court ruling prohibits the execution of people convicted of raping children and says it’s unclear if the use of the federal death penalty would be constitutional in certain cases in which someone was not killed.

Lots of Rahimi GVRs and a curious GVR in long-simering Eighth Amendment capital eligibility case in new SCOTUS order list

The Supreme Court is back in action this week, and this morning it released this notable new order list.  The start and end of the list will be of greatest interest for criminal justice fans.  At the start, we get seven GVRs of criminal cases from four different circuits needing "further consideration in light of United States v. Rahimi, 602 U. S. ___ (2024)."   I am not sure of the specifics of all these cases, but I am sure the Rahimi Second Amendment churn and uncertainty is not concluding anytime soon.

What is concluding, though, is uncertainty about what the Justices are doing with Hamm v Smith, a case the Court had relisted more than 25 times, I believe. (This recent post noted some recent speculation about the case.)  At the end of today' order list we find a two-page per curiam order sending the case back to the Elevent Circuit.  Here is how it starts and ends: 

Joseph Clifton Smith was sentenced to death for the murder of Durk Van Dam. The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Alabama vacated Smith’s death sentence after concluding that he is intellectually disabled. See Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U. S. 304 (2002). Smith has obtained five full-scale IQ scores, ranging from 72 to 78. Smith’s claim of intellectual disability depended in part on whether his IQ is 70 or below.  The District Court found that Smith’s IQ could be as low as 69 given the standard error of measurement for his lowest score of 72.  The District Court then vacated the death sentence, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed.....

The Eleventh Circuit’s opinion is unclear on [its approach to multiple IQ scores], and this Court’s ultimate assessment of any petition for certiorari by the State may depend on the basis for the Eleventh Circuit’s decision.  Therefore, we grant the petition for certiorari and Smith’s motion for leave to proceed in forma pauperis, vacate the judgment of the Eleventh Circuit, and remand the case for further consideration consistent with this opinion.

JUSTICE THOMAS and JUSTICE GORSUCH would grant the petition for a writ of certiorari and set the case for argument.

This GVR conclusion to this long-simmering case may only enhance speculation about what various Justices might have considered the right approach to the broader issues of the Eighth Amentment jurisprudence this case could raise. It will be quite intriguing to see what the Eleventh Circuit might do upon remand and what might come before SCOTUS thereafter.  

For those interested in a bit more background, here is a new CNN article on the Hamm v. Smith disposition: "Supreme Court orders more review of Alabama’s request to execute inmate courts said is intellectually disabled."

Notable accounting of California's recent capital punishment administration realities

The Sacremento Bee has this lengthy new piece, headlined "Justice or politics? Here’s why California prosecutors seek death penalty despite moratorium," providing all sorts of notable history and particulars about the administration of capital punishment in the Golden State.  I recommend the piece in full, and here are a few excerpts:

The Sacramento County District Attorney’s Office was just one of three to secure capital punishment in 2023, among California’s 58 counties. And prosecutors’ pursuit of the death penalty has slowed but hasn’t stopped, despite a statewide moratorium....

But a person has not been executed in California in nearly two decades after legal arguments arose over lethal injections, the state’s execution method. Gov. Gavin Newsom halted executions by instituting a moratorium in March 2019. Prosecutions resulting in the death penalty have declined since then — five or fewer each year since 2019, compared to a yearly average of just over 15 from 2003 through 2018....

Capital punishment and its legality in California have changed over time. Executions in the state’s early history were only allowed in county jails or “some convenient private place” in the county under the Criminal Practices Act of 1851, according to a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation document.  But the Legislature barred local executions, and moved killings to the state level in 1891. The first ever executions by the state happened March 3, 1893, at San Quentin State Prison and Dec. 13, 1895, at Folsom State Prison.

A series of state and federal court decisions halted executions in California for 25 years starting from 1967.  The California Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that the death penalty was unconstitutional because it amounted to cruel and unusual punishment.  The ruling led 107 inmates on death row to be resentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Former Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed a bill in 1977 proposing to revive the death penalty, a highly controversial move that outraged voters who had approved a proposition seeking executions in 1972, according to The Sacramento Bee’s previous reporting. The state Senate and Assembly overrode Brown’s veto, only the third time since 1946 the Legislature had reversed a governor’s signature.

Voters then approved Proposition 7, the current statute of the death penalty, in 1978. The first execution under that statute did not come until 1992.

"Child Rape and the Death Penalty"

The title of this post is the title of this new paper authored by Rosemary Ardman now available via SSRN.  Here is its abstract:

In May 2023, Florida authorized the death penalty for the sexual battery of a child under twelve.  The law, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, challenges the Supreme Court to overrule Kennedy v. Louisiana, the controversial 2008 decision holding that the Eighth Amendment prohibits capital punishment for the rape of the child. Tennessee followed suit with its own capital rape law in May 2024, and six other states have considered similar expansions to the scope of the death penalty in the past year.

This surge of legislative interest in capitalizing child rape has received limited attention, but it suggests the reemergence of an old frontier in Eighth Amendment jurisprudence.  There is a need to reexamine Kennedy in this light and, more broadly, to interrogate the paradoxical role that sex crimes against children occupy in American law and culture.

This Article provides that analysis and makes three scholarly contributions.  First, the Article provides a thick descriptive account of the dissonance of the criminal system's response to child sexual abuse -- a blend of apathy and outrage, horror and indifference.  Second, the Article uses the concept of disgust to reconcile these seemingly contradictory narratives.  Though most often associated with food and bodily waste, disgust can attach equally to social violations.  Scholars have employed disgust to explain anti-sodomy laws, incest prohibitions, and domestic violence judgments, and this Article extends the analysis to child rape.  Third, the Article argues that understanding these prosecutions through the lens of disgust reveals the constitutional infirmities of the death penalty for child rape. Ultimately, the Article suggests that capital child rape laws act as a symbol of revulsion at the expense of the broader system of punishment, an expression that reflects our own unsettled view of the crime.

New DPIC analysis of execution "volunteers"

The Death Penalty Information Center has this "New Analysis" titled "Death-Sentenced Prisoners ​'Volunteer' for Execution at Ten Times Civilian Suicide Rate." Here are some excerpts from the start of the lengthy piece:

Derrick Dearman first told his mother that he wanted to die when he was four years old.  On October 17, he was executed by the state of Alabama, becoming the 20th person executed in the United States this year and the 165th in the modern era to “volunteer” for death.  A new analysis by the Death Penalty Information Center shows that despite falling rates of death sentences, executions, and public support for the death penalty, the number of death-sentenced prisoners waiving their appeals and choosing execution remains high — ten times higher than suicide rates among the general public.  An estimated one in ten modern executions are the result of the prisoner’s choice.  Given that the legal bar for “competence” to waive capital appeals is extremely low, scores of people have been executed on their own request despite evidence of severe mental illness and other serious constitutional concerns about their convictions and death sentences....

In 2005, Cornell Law School Professor John Blume published a seminal study on volunteers titled “Killing the Willing: ‘Volunteers,’ Suicide, and Competency.”  In an analysis of volunteers from 1977-2003, he found that 88% had struggled with mental illness and/or substance abuse.  Volunteers did not split evenly along race or gender lines: 85% were white males, despite that group representing only 45% of those on death row. Black men represented 43% of death row but only 3% of volunteers.

DPI analyzed volunteers in the twenty years since the study and concluded that Professor Blume’s findings hold true today.  Of the 165 people executed at their own request since 1977, 87% battled mental illness, substance abuse, or both. About 46% of people sentenced to death in the modern era have been white men — but they make up 84% of volunteers.  The last ten volunteers, going back to 2016, have all been white men.  Meanwhile, 41% of modern death sentences have been imposed on Black men, but they represent only 5% of volunteers (eight total).  The difference in volunteer rates for white and Black men, compared to their death sentence rates, is strongly statistically significant. Statistics for women are somewhat more consistent: about 2% of people sentenced to death have been women of any race, and 2% of volunteers have been women (only three total, all white). 

"No Need To Wait: Congress Has the Power Under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to Abolish the Death Penalty in the States"

The title of this post is the title of this new article now available via SSRN and authored by Eric Freedman. Here is its abstract:

Congress has the authority to abolish the death penalty in the states, and good reason to exercise it.

This Article takes as a given the Supreme Court’s view that the death penalty is not itself unconstitutional.

But under existing law Congress would have no difficulty in compiling a record that would support the use of its enforcement power under Section Five of the Fourteenth Amendment to enact a statute forbidding the imposition of capital punishment by those states that retain the practice.  The statute would be congruent and proportional legislation to remedy and prevent an amply documented history of violations of rights that the Court has long recognized as fundamental concerns.

Those violations include the states’: (1) denial of effective assistance of counsel to capital defendants, (2) racial discrimination in the selection of capital jurors and in charging and sentencing decisions, (3) failure to structure death penalty systems so as to reliably result in the execution of the most culpable of the potentially eligible defendants, (4) execution of the mentally impaired, (5) execution of prisoners contrary to the Constitution due to the fortuities of litigation timing, (6) execution of the innocent, and (7) use of torturous methods of execution.

Advocacy efforts supporting a federal statute abolishing capital punishment may achieve surprising success. Congressional representatives from abolitionist states may vote for one, and so may some legislators from retentionist states, buttressed by the growing number of political conservatives who support abolition. In any event, the campaign itself may strengthen the abolitionist cause.

"The 'Alito Hypothesis' in an Era of Emboldened One-Party State Rule"

The title of this post is the title of this new essay now available via SSRN authored by Wayne Logan. Here is its abstract:

The Supreme Court has long relied upon state legislative preferences when establishing federal constitutional norms. With capital punishment, for instance, state laws figure centrally when deciding whether a particular practice satisfies Eighth Amendment “evolving standards of decency.”  In Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008), which barred execution of child rapists, Justice Alito in dissent hypothesized that the majority under counted the number of states supporting the practice, reasoning that Coker v. Georgia (1977), which barred execution for the rape of an adult woman, likely discouraged states from enacting capital child rape laws, resulting in a misleadingly low tally of state preferences.

This essay questions the viability of what I term the “Alito Hypothesis” in a time when multiple states are dominated by conservative one-party political rule, emboldened by a like-minded Supreme Court seemingly less wedded to stare decisis.  Recent experience in Florida provides a case in point.  In Spring 2023, the Republican super majority Florida legislature passed, and Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law, a provision adding child rape to the list of death-eligible offenses.  In doing so, the state made clear that it was not deterred from enacting a facially unconstitutional law, expressly proclaiming that Kennedy “was wrongly decided and an egregious infringement of the states’ power to punish the most heinous of crimes.”

If Florida’s bold approach catches on, there will likely come challenges to other constitutional precedents.  These include those limiting other punishment practices (capital and non-capital), protections afforded criminal defendants, and civil liberty protections, such as the right to access contraceptives and the prohibition of poll taxes.  In short, rather than being dissuaded from enacting contrarian laws, as the Alito Hypothesis would dictate, emboldened states enacting facially unconstitutional laws could well provide the basis for the Court’s reassessment of state-level preferences in multiple areas, in time possibly spearheading a major overhaul of the nation’s federal constitutional rights infrastructure. 

Federal judge refuses to interfere with South Carolina's clemency process

I flagged in this recent post the notable request by a condemned South Carolina inmate for a federal judge to take away the clemency power from the SC Governor.  Richard Moore argued that the Gov could not fairly consider his request to commute his death sentence to a life sentence because the Gov had been Attorney General overseeing efforts to uphold Moore’s death sentence.  Yesterday, as detailed in this local press piece, this request was rebuffed:

A federal judge has ruled that Gov. Henry McMaster will retain his right to be the final judge of clemency for a death row inmate even though he once claimed to have no intention of doing so.  “The Court is confident... Governor McMaster will give full, thoughtful, and careful consideration to any clemency petition filed by Moore, giving both comprehensive and individualized attention to the unique circumstances of his case,” wrote U.S. District Court Judge Mary Geiger Lewis in a ruling issued Monday.....

Moore, 59, is scheduled to be executed by lethal injection on Nov. 1. He was sentenced to death in 2001 for shooting and killing James Mahoney, a Spartanburg County store clerk, during an armed robbery two years prior....

Legal precedent did not support removing a governor’s power to grant clemency, contained in the state constitution, just because he had served as an attorney general, Lewis wrote....  Lewis’ ruling came after she took the extraordinary step of requesting the governor to submit an affidavit to the court swearing that he would carefully consider Moore’s clemency request.

In a carefully worded affidavit, McMaster wrote that “understanding that executive clemency is purely a matter of mercy and grace within the exclusive authority and solemn discretion bestowed up the Governor alone... it is and has been my intention and commitment to take care to understand the issues presented, including those from my review and consideration of applications, petition, and request for clemency presented to me by or on behalf of a condemned inmate.”

Moore’s lawyers told The State that they intend to appeal the decision to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The full 10-page ruling in Moore v. McMaster, No. 3:24-5580-MGL (DSC Oct. 21, 2024) (available for download below) makes for an interesting read. Here are a few notable passages:

As an initial matter, Moore misconstrues Woodard as holding the minimal procedural safeguards guaranteed by the Due Process Clause include notice and an opportunity to be heard before an impartial decision-maker. This standard is unsupported by Woodard, which merely requires the Court to determine whether a state’s clemency procedures are arbitrary or based upon whim. 523 U.S. at 289 (“[S]ome minimal procedural safeguards apply to clemency proceedings. Judicial intervention might, for example, be warranted in the face of a scheme whereby a state official flipped a coin to determine whether to grant clemency, or in a case where the State arbitrarily denied a prisoner any access to its clemency process.”)....

Even if the Court were to employ the standard set forth by Moore, however, and hold the minimal procedural safeguards guaranteed by the Due Process Clause include Moore “having his clemency application considered and evaluated by an impartial, open-minded, and unbiased decision-maker[,]” Moore’s Motion at 1, the Court is confident — based on the full context of Governor McMaster’s public statement and his declaration — Governor McMaster will give full, thoughtful, and careful consideration to any clemency petition filed by Moore, giving both comprehensive and individualized attention to the unique circumstances of his case.

Download Moore v. McMaster clemency ruling

Speculating about many SCOTUS relists in Eighth Amendment capital case concerning intellectual disability

Ian Millhiser has this interesting new Vox piece discussing the oft-relisted Supreme Court case of Hamm v. Smith under the headline "The strange case that the Supreme Court keeps refusing to decide: A mysterious Supreme Court case could change everything about criminal punishment." I recommend the lengthy piece in full, and here is how it gets started (with links from the original):

For more than a year, Joseph Clifton Smith, a man who says he is intellectually disabled, has sat on death row, waiting to find out if the Supreme Court will greenlight his execution.  Smith’s case, known as Hamm v. Smith, first arrived on the Court’s doorstep in August 2023.  Since then, the justices have met more than two dozen times to decide what to do about the case, and each time they’ve put the decision off until a future meeting.

No one outside of the Court can know for sure why the justices keep delaying, but if you follow the Court’s Eighth Amendment cases closely, it’s easy to see how the Hamm case could open up all kinds of internal rifts among the justices.

The Eighth Amendment, which has a vague ban on “cruel and unusual punishments,” is at the center of the Hamm case because, for decades, the Court has held this amendment forbids executions of intellectually disabled offenders (and offenders who commit a crime while they are juveniles). The idea is that both groups have diminished mental capacity, at least as compared to non-disabled adults, and thus bear less moral responsibility even for homicide crimes.

That idea, however, has long been contested by the Court’s various ideological factions, and the Hamm case potentially reopens up all of the Court’s issues with the amendment at once. Indeed, in the worst-case scenario for criminal defendants, the justices could potentially overrule more than 60 years of precedents protecting against excessive punishments.

This Vox piece goes on to highlight how the Hamm case potentially highlights how modern Eighth Amendment precendents does not jibe with more originalist views of the Cruel and Unusual Punishments clause.  Here is part of Millhiser's explanation:

[I]t’s possible that the Court is fighting over what to do with the Hamm case because many of the justices want a wholesale revolution in Eighth Amendment law.

Beginning in the mid-20th century, the Supreme Court maintained that the Eighth Amendment “must draw its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.”  Thus, as a particular method of punishment grew less common, the Court was increasingly likely to declare it cruel and unusual in violation of the Constitution.

At least some members of the Court’s Republican majority, however, have suggested that this “evolving standards of decency” framework should be abandoned.  In Bucklew v. Precythe (2019), the Court considered whether states could use execution methods that risked causing the dying inmate a great deal of pain. Justice Neil Gorsuch’s majority opinion, which held that potentially painful methods of execution are allowed, seems to exist in a completely different universe than the Court’s Eighth Amendment cases that look to evolving standards.

While the Court’s earlier opinions ask whether a particular form of punishment has fallen out of favor today, Gorsuch asked whether a method of punishment was out of favor at the time of the founding....  What makes Bucklew confusing, however, is that it didn’t explicitly overrule any of the previous decisions applying the evolving standards framework.  So it’s unclear whether all five of the justices who joined that opinion share a desire to blow up more than a half-century of law....  Bucklew looms like a vulture over any cruel and unusual punishment case heard by the Court, as it suggests that the Republican justices may hit the reset button on all of its Eighth Amendment precedents at any time.

Thanks to some helpful readers, I have been keeping an eye on Hamm v. Smith, and Millhiser seems right that something notable is afoot behind closed SCOTUS doors.  My uninformed guess is that a few Justices, most likely Justice Alito, Gorsuch and/or Thomas, may be actively seeking to encourage their colleagues to take up the case as an opportunity to review and recast Eighth Amendment, but they are having a hard time getting a fourth vote for cert. And that challenge may reflect not only the concern other Justices may have about overturning modern Eighth Amendment precedents, but also the fact that a rigorous approach to Eighth Amendment originalism could possibly expand some rights against excessive punishments (according to some academics)

Amid serious claims of innocence, Texas Supreme Court halts execution based on legislative subpoena

This local article, headlined "In stunning move, Texas Supreme Court halts Robert Roberson execution in 'shaken baby' case," provides an effective review (with links) of the legal drama yesterday that ultimately halted a closely watched execution date. Here are just some excerpts of just some part of quite a story:

The Texas Supreme Court late Thursday spared Robert Roberson on the night he was set to die by lethal injection, a rare and head-spinning eleventh-hour decision in one of the most controversial death penalty cases in years.

The all-Republican court's decision comes in response to a first-of-its-kind legal maneuver in which a state House committee voted to subpoena Roberson for a hearing scheduled days after his execution date. It could buy Roberson — who was set to become the first American executed for a conviction involving "shaken baby" syndrome at 6 p.m. Thursday — weeks or months to live as court proceedings continue to play out.

The order caps a whirlwind two-day effort from a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers who feverishly fought to keep a man they believe to be innocent from the execution chamber and riveted the nation's attention on Texas' application of the death penalty. 

The House representatives who led the movement expressed relief in a Thursday night joint statement. "For over 20 years, Robert Roberson has spent 23.5 hours of every single day in solitary confinement in a cell no bigger than the closets of most Texans, longing and striving to be heard," said Reps. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, and Joe Moody, D-El Paso. "And while some courthouses may have failed him, the Texas House has not." 

The drama Thursday took off when Leach and Moody successfully asked a Travis County state District Court to temporarily stay the execution to allow Roberson to answer a summons that the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence unanimously approved Wednesday.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals shortly thereafter overturned that lower court's approval of the lawmakers' request in a 5-4 decision, and minutes later Leach and Moody filed an emergency motion with the Texas Supreme Court to intervene, arguing the Criminal Appeals Court lacked jurisdiction over a ruling made in a civil court. Leach posted on social media before the state Supreme Court's decision that he was "Praying as if everything depends on God, which it does. But working as if everything depends on us."

The state Supreme Court agreed with the lawmakers, with Justice Evan Young writing in a concurrence that "the underlying criminal-law matter is within the Court of Criminal Appeals’ authority, but the relief sought here is civil in nature, as are the claims that have been presented to the district court."

Roberson's case for a reprieve has drawn widespread support from more than 80 Texas House members as well as from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Dr. Phil and others.  After the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a petition to delay the execution around 4 p.m. Thursday, Sotomayor wrote in a statement that "mounting evidence suggests ... Roberson committed no crime at all."  Sotomayor and others have urged Gov. Greg Abbott to grant Roberson a 30-day reprieve, but the governor has remained silent on the case.

Alabama completes execution of mass ax murderer

As reported in this local article, "Alabama executed Derrick Dearman Thursday evening by lethal injection for the brutal killings of five members of his then-girlfriend’s family in Mobile County in 2016. It was the state’s second execution in a span of three weeks."  Here is more:

Court records show he used an ax, a .45 cal. handgun and a shotgun in the massacre at a home in Citronelle, which is about 30 miles north of Mobile.  One of the victims, Chelsea Marie Reed, was five months pregnant.

The execution happened in the death chamber of the William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, about an hour and a half south of Montgomery.  Dearman had fired his attorneys from the Equal Justice Initiative earlier in the year and asked all appeals on his behalf be halted.  He also mailed letters to Attorney General Steve Marshal and Gov. Kay Ivey asking that his execution proceed....

Alabama is on track to tying the record for most executions in a year at six.  The state is ending the string with back to back to back execution is September, October and November.  In the November execution, scheduled for the Thursday before Thanksgiving, goes forward the state will have conducted three executions in eight weeks.

Two different stories about two different executions scheduled for tomorrow in two states

I was struck by these notably distinct headlines and subheadlines from USA Today about two executions scheduled for tomorrow in Alabama and Texas:

"'I am guilty:' Alabama inmate Derrick Dearman asks for death sentence to be carried out: Dearman says his death will bring justice to the families of the five people he killed with an ax and a gun, including a pregnant woman. He has also criticized the process that has delayed his death."

"All evidence points to Robert Roberson's innocence. Texas still plans to execute him.: Roberson remains scheduled to die by lethal injection despite evidence indicating he was wrongfully convicted for the death of his 2-year-old daughter Nikki, whom police believed was shaken to death."

I have not followed either of these cases closely, though I do know know many persons beyond the USA Today writers doubt guilt in the Texas case.

With eight more executions scheduled, 2024 could conclude with most US executions in nearly a decade

I flagged here last month that a flourish of executions in multiple states had been scheduled over just a week, and all five of those executions were ultimately carried out.  I now see from this Death Penalty Information Center page that eight more executions are scheduled for the final few months of 2024.  If seven of those executions go forward as planned, the US will have completed 26 total execution in 2024, which would be more than in any calendar year since 2015.

Of course, 26 executions in a year is still a relatively paltry number in America's capital punishment history.  In the 1930s, for example, the US averaged well over 150 executions per year.  And from 1995 to 2014, the US states executed, on average, 56 persons per year, and hit a modern peak of 98 executions in 1999.  Still, I find it fascinating that state executions were trending down in the final years of the Trump Administration and now are trending up in the final years of the Biden Administration.  These trends seem especially notable given that candidate Joe Biden pledged to work to "eliminate the death penalty."    

Writing at Inquest, Lee Kovarsky highlights in this new essay how this year's presidential election could prove an inflection point in modern capital punishment history.  The substitle of the piece captures its main theme: "The presidential candidates are worlds apart on the death penalty. The winner could either jolt or sap the energy of the movement to end it."

Supreme Court reveals (predictable) split during argument on Glossip capital case

Supreme Court watchers who know the current Justices' patterns, especially in capital cases, would have expected Justices Barrett and Kavanaugh to be likely key swing votes in the Glossip case argued today (previewed here).  This round-up of some press accounts of today's Glossip argument suggest those Justices are likely to deterimine the case's fate:

From NPR, "Okla. AG seeks new trial for death row inmate, but Supreme Court seems split"

From SCOTUSblog, "No clear decision as justices debate Richard Glossip’s death sentence"

From the New York Times, "Splintered Supreme Court Wrestles With Case of Oklahoma Death Row Inmate"

From the Washington Examiner, "Supreme Court appears divided over Oklahoma death row appeal"

From the Washington Post, "Supreme Court closely divided on new trial for Oklahoma death row inmate"

Previewing SCOTUS's latest Glossip argument

Richard Glossip already has a significant Supreme Court ruling associated with his name; nearly a decade ago, SCOTUS considered and then rejected his Eighth Amendment challenge to Oklahoma's lethal injection protocol.  In addition, as the start of this AP article notes, Glossip has had eventful decades on death row after his conviction related to a 1997 murder-for-hire scheme: "Oklahoma has set execution dates nine times for death row inmate Richard Glossip.  The state has fed him three 'last meals.'  Glossip has even been married twice while awaiting execution."

Now, Glossip's case is coming before the Supreme Court again, and this thorough SCOTUSblog preview highlights the latest complicated chapter in an eventful capital punishment procedural.  Here is how that post starts and its framing of the key issues before SCOTUS:

Twice in the past decade the Supreme Court has blocked Oklahoma from executing Richard Glossip. Now the state has joined Glossip to argue that newly uncovered evidence shows prosecutors violated his rights at trial. But even with the Oklahoma’s rare confession of error, both the state’s highest court for criminal cases and te state’s pardon and parole board turned down Glossip’s pleas for relief. On Oct. 9, two former U.S. solicitors general -- Seth Waxman, representing Glossip, and Paul Clement, representing Oklahoma’s attorney general -- will appear before the justices, seeking to persuade them to set aside Glossip’s conviction and death sentence and order a new trial.

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond told the court that the state is not looking for an exoneration “by fiat (or at all)” but that “justice would not be served by moving forward with a capital sentence that the State can no longer defend.”

In 1997, Barry Van Treese was bludgeoned to death with a baseball bat in the room he was staying in at his Oklahoma City motel, where Glossip worked as a manager. Another one of Van Treese’s employees, Justin Sneed, confessed to killing him while on meth. He is serving a life sentence. Glossip has maintained he had no part in the murder and is innocent over the decades he has been on death row.

The only evidence implicating Glossip in Van Treese’s death was testimony from Sneed, who worked as a handyman at the hotel. Sneed told jurors that Glossip paid him up to $10,000 to kill Van Treese. In exchange for his testimony, prosecutors promised Sneed that he would not face the death penalty....

In granting the case, the justices added a question for the parties to address: Whether the Supreme Court has the power to review the decision by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals at all, or whether it is instead barred from doing so because the decision rests on an “adequate and independent state ground.”...

The second question before the court goes to the heart of the case: Whether the justices should invalidate Glossip’s conviction and sentence because prosecutors failed to correct false testimony by Sneed and turn over evidence that might have helped to clear Glossip.

Because any grant of cert by the Justices in a case of this nature usually means more than a few are concerned about the rulings below, I suspect that both the claims of innocence and his support from Oklahoma's AG has prompted some of the more conservative members of the Court to want to take this new look at this long-running case. And yet, the more conservative member of the Court have, generally sepaking, been much more comfortable showing much more deference to state court capital procedings. It will be interesting to see which Justices at oral argument seem most troubled by Glossip's case.

Texas completes execution for murders committed 35 years ago

As reported in this AP article, a "Texas man convicted of fatally stabbing twin 16-year-old girls more than three decades ago was executed on Tuesday evening."  Here is more:

Garcia Glenn White was pronounced dead at 6:56 p.m. CDT following a chemical injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was condemned for the December 1989 killings of Annette and Bernette Edwards.  The bodies of the twin girls and their mother, Bonita Edwards, were found in their Houston apartment.

White, 61, was the sixth inmate put to death in the U.S. in the last 11 days.  His execution took place shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court, without comment, rejected three last-ditch appeals....

He said he took responsibility for the slayings, regretted his actions and was praying for prison officials, officers and “for my brothers and sisters behind these walls.”...

Testimony showed that White went to the girls’ Houston home to smoke crack with their mother, Bonita, who also was fatally stabbed.  When the girls came out of their room to see what happened, White attacked them. Evidence showed White broke down the locked door of the girls’ bedroom.  Authorities said he was later tied to the deaths of a grocery store owner and another woman.

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, who witnessed White’s death, lamented that it took some 30 years to carry out the jury’s death verdict as multiple appeals in White’s case worked through the courts.  “The suffering of surviving (victims’) family members is just unspeakable,” she said. “At least it’s over.”

White’s lawyers had unsuccessfully appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the execution after lower courts previously rejected petitions for a stay.  The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles on Friday denied White’s request to commute his death sentence to a lesser penalty or to grant him a 30-day reprieve....

The deaths of the twin girls and their mother went unsolved for about six years until White confessed to the killings after he was arrested in connection with the July 1995 death of grocery store owner Hai Van Pham, who was fatally beaten during a robbery at his business.  Police said White also confessed to fatally beating another woman, Greta Williams, in 1989.

Another day, another two executions completed in two states

As noted in this post, on Tuesday of this week, Missouri and Texas completed executions of condemned murderers.  Today, it was Alabama and Oklahoma carrying out executions.  Here are press accounts:

From AL.com, "Alabama inmate Alan Miller executed with nitrogen gas Thursday for 1999 shootings":

An Alabama Death Row inmate, convicted of killing three men in a workplace shooting, was executed Thursday evening. He is the second inmate in the country to be executed using nitrogen gas.

Alan Eugene Miller, 59, was executed at 6 p.m. at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore. The prison, located just north of the Florida border, is the only facility in the state equipped with an execution chamber and where most of the state’s death row inmates are housed.

From USA Today, "Emmanuel Littlejohn executed in Oklahoma despite clemency recommendation from state board":

Emmanuel Littlejohn was executed by the state of Oklahoma Thursday morning in the shooting death of a beloved convenience store owner, despite a recommendation from a clemency board that his life should be spared.

Littlejohn was convicted of the 1992 murder of Kenneth Meers in a robbery that turned fatal. Littlejohn had admitted to his role in the robbery but insisted until his death that an accomplice was the one to pull the trigger.

Littlejohn's execution was the fourth in the U.S. in less than a week and comes just hours before Alabama is set to use nitrogen gas to execute Alan Eugene Miller on Thursday evening.

Missouri and Texas both complete lethal injection executions

Two states completed executions last night.  Here are the basics from news accounts:

From CNN, "Missouri executes Marcellus Williams despite prosecutors and the victim’s family asking that he be spared":

Marcellus Williams, whose murder conviction was questioned by a prosecutor, died by lethal injection Tuesday evening in Missouri after the US Supreme Court denied a stay.  The 55-year-old was put to death around 6 p.m. CT at the state prison in Bonne Terre.

Williams’ attorneys had filed a flurry of appeal efforts based on what they described as new evidence – including alleged bias in jury selection and contamination of the murder weapon prior to trial. The victim’s family had asked the inmate be spared death.  The US Supreme Court’s action came a day after Missouri’s supreme court and governor refused to grant a stay of execution.

From AP, "Texas man who waived his right to appeal death sentence is executed for killing infant son":

A Texas man who had waived his right to appeal his death sentence received a lethal injection Tuesday evening for killing his 3-month-old son more than 16 years ago, one of five executions scheduled within a week’s time in the U.S.

Travis Mullis, 38, was pronounced dead at 7:01 p.m. CDT following the injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville. He was condemned for stomping to death his son Alijah in January 2008.

I believe that the last time the US had two executions on the same day was just last year on November 16, 2023. And it woudl happen again tomorrow with executions scheduled in Alabama and Oklahoma.

South Carolina completes its first execution in 13 years

As reported in this AP piece, "South Carolina put inmate Freddie Owens to death Friday as the state restarted executions after an unintended 13-year pause because prison officials couldn’t get the drugs needed for lethal injections."  Here is more:

Owens was convicted of the 1997 killing of a Greenville convenience store clerk during a robbery.  While on trial, Owens killed a person incarcerated at a county jail. His confession to that attack was read to two different juries and a judge who all sentenced him to death....

Owens’ last-ditch appeals were repeatedly denied, including by a federal court Friday morning.  Owens also petitioned for a stay of execution from the U.S. Supreme Court.  South Carolina’s governor and corrections director swiftly filed a reply, stating the high court should reject Owens’ petition. The filing said nothing is exceptional about his case.  The high court denied the request shortly after the scheduled start time of the execution.

His last chance to avoid death was for Republican South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster to commute his sentence to life in prison.  McMaster denied Owens’ request as well, stating that he had “carefully reviewed and thoughtfully considered” Owens’ application for clemency.

Owens may be the first of several people to die in the state’s death chamber at Broad River Correctional Institution. Five other people are out of appeals, and the South Carolina Supreme Court has cleared the way to hold an execution every five weeks.

South Carolina first tried to add the firing squad to restart executions after its supply of lethal injection drugs expired and no company was willing to publicly sell them more.  But the state had to pass a shield law keeping the drug supplier and much of the protocol for executions secret to be able to reopen the death chamber.

To carry out executions, the state switched from a three-drug method to a new protocol of using just the sedative pentobarbital.  The new process is similar to how the federal government kills people on death row, state prison officials said....

South Carolina has put 43 people to death since the death penalty was restarted in the U.S. in 1976. In the early 2000s, it was carrying out an average of three executions a year.  Only nine states have put more people to death.

Since the unintentional execution pause, South Carolina’s death row population has dwindled.  The state had 63 condemned people in early 2011.  It now has 31 after Owens’ death Friday.  About 20 people have been taken off death row and received different prison sentences after successful appeals.  Others have died of natural causes.

Five executions scheduled in five different states over the next week

Over the first eight months of 2024, the United States has averaged less than two executions per month.  And two executions per month has been, very roughly, the average pace of executions in the US for the past decade.  For context and comparison, over the decade from 2005 to 2014, the US averaged nearly four executions per month; over the decade from 1995 to 2004, the US average approach almost six executions per month. 

But starting with a scheduled execution in South Carolina tomorrow, there are five executions scheduled over the next week with Missouri and Texas both having executions scheduled for Tuesday, September 24, and Oklahoma and Alabama both having executions scheduled for Thursday, September 26.  Based on a (too quick) scan of the DPIC database, I believe it has been nearly 15 years since the US has completed five executions within a week. 

It remains to be seen if all of these executions will be completed as scheduled.  As Chris Geidner discusses in this new substack post, some of the condemned are raising innocence claims and others are pressing various litigation avenues seeking to disrupt state execution plans.  If all these scheduled executions are completed, the US would have carried a total of exactly 1600 executions in the "modern" death penalty era (which is now nearly 50 years along).

Should Alabama's next scheduled nitrogen gas execution be video recorded?

The question in the title of this post is prompted by this AP piece discussing litigation over the nitrogen gas execution scheduled in less than two weeks in Alabama.  Here are excerpts: 

The state of Alabama asked a judge Friday to deny defense lawyers’ request to film the next execution by nitrogen gas in an attempt to help courts evaluate whether the new method is humane.

The request to record the scheduled Sept. 26 execution of Alan Miller was filed by attorneys for another man facing the death penalty, Carey Dale Grayson. They are challenging the constitutionality of the method after Alabama carried out the nation’s first execution by nitrogen gas in January, when Kenneth Smith was put to death.

“Serious constitutional questions linger over Alabama’s nitrogen hypoxia protocol. To date, the only instance of a judicially sanctioned execution — that of Kenneth Eugene Smith — using nitrogen did not proceed in the manner defendants promised,” lawyers for inmate Carey Dale Grayson wrote. Grayson is scheduled to be executed in November with nitrogen gas.

Witnesses to Smith’s execution described him shaking on the gurney for several minutes as he was put to death by nitrogen gas. Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall declared the execution was a “textbook” success. Attorneys for Grayson wrote that, “one way to assist in providing an accurate record of the next nitrogen execution is to require it be videotaped.”

The lethal injection of a Georgia man was recorded in 2011.  The Associated Press reported that video camera and a camera operator were in the execution chamber.  Judges had approved another inmate’s request to record the execution to provide evidence about the effects of pentobarbital.  A 1992 execution in California was recorded when attorneys challenged the use of the gas chamber as a method of execution.

The Alabama attorney general’s office on Friday asked U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker, Jr. to deny the request. “There is no purpose to be served by the contemplated intrusion into the state’s operation of its criminal justice system and execution of a criminal sentence wholly unrelated to this case,” state attorneys wrote in the court filing.

Rounding up some notable new capital punishment pieces

In recent posts, I have already covered notable capital punishment adminstration stories from Florida and Missouri and South Carolina.  And as news and commentary on death penalty issues keeps emerging from states and nationally, an abridged round-up of notable recent pieces catching my eye seemed in order:

From 10News, "Gov. Lee says Tennessee is working to resume executions, after sudden halt in 2022"

From the Daily Mail.com, "Trump reveals he'll bring BACK the federal death penalty and expand it to cover these sick crimes... do you agree?"

From FITSNews, "Capital Punishment: Line. Them. Up. And put them down…"

From The Journal, "The weight of the wait 30 years after Kansas death penalty law"

From the Kansas City Star, "Kris Kobach: The only problem with Kansas’ death penalty is that it takes too long"

From the New York Times, "America Does Not Need the Death Penalty"

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazzette, "Editorial: Baby Leon Katz deserves justice. Pursuing the death penalty will only delay it"

From Salon, "The end of the abolition era: Democrats quietly drop their opposition to the death penalty"

From USA Today, "Death penalty in the US: Which states still execute inmates, who has executed the most?"

Florida completes execution of man 30 years after murder and rape of siblings

As reported in this AP article, a "A Florida man convicted of killing a college freshman and raping the murder victim’s older sister while the siblings camped in a national forest 30 years ago was executed Thursday."  Here is more:

Loran Cole, 57, received a lethal injection and was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. at Florida State Prison for the 1994 killing of the 18-year-old student. Cole also was serving two life sentences for rape.

Cole and a friend, William Paul, befriended the two college students in the Ocala National Forest, court records showed. After talking around a fire, the men offered to take the siblings to see a pond.  While away from the campsite, Cole and Paul jumped the victims and robbed them, according to the records.

The brother, 18, who was a student at Florida State University, was beaten and had his throat slit and left in the forest.  His sister, then a 21-year-old senior at Eckerd College, was taken back to the campsite, where Cole tied her up and raped her, according to the record.  The woman was left tied to a tree overnight and raped again the next day. She eventually managed to free herself and flagged down a driver for help.  Police found her brother’s body lying face down on the ground, according to court records.

Paul and Cole were both convicted of first-degree murder.  Paul was sentenced to life in prison....

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Cole’s final appeal earlier Thursday.  His lawyers had raised several points in seeking a stay of execution, including the fact that Cole was an inmate at a state-run reform school where he and other boys were beaten and raped.  The state has since apologized for the abuse and this year passed a law authorizing reparations for inmates at the now-shuttered reform school.  The lawyers also argued Cole shouldn’t be executed because he was mentally ill and had brain damage and Parkinson’s disease.

South Carolina Supreme Court takes up pacing of state execution plans

As reported in this new AP piece, the "South Carolina Supreme Court won't allow another execution in the state until it determines a minimum amount of time between sending inmates to the death chamber." Here is more:

The state's next execution, scheduled for Sept. 20, is still on for inmate Freddie Eugene Owens.  It would be the first execution in South Carolina in over 13 years after the court cleared the way to reopen the death chamber last month.

But as it set Owens' execution date Friday, the court also agreed to take up a request from four other death row inmates who are out of appeals to require the state to wait at least three months between executions.  In its response, state prosecutors suggested setting the minimum at no longer than four weeks between executions.

Currently, the Supreme Court can set executions as close together as a week apart.  That accelerated schedule would rush lawyers who are trying to represent multiple inmates on death row, a lawyer for the inmates wrote in court papers.  Prison staff who have to take extensive steps to prepare to put an inmate to death and could cause botched executions, attorney Lindsey Vann said.

Neither argument is a good reason to wait for three months, state prosecutors responded in offering up to a four-week delay.  “The Department of Corrections staff stands ready to accomplish their duty as required by our law with professionalism and dignity,” Senior Deputy Attorney General Melody Brown wrote in a response drafted after speaking to prison officials....

South Carolina has held executions in rapid succession before.  Two half brothers were put to death in one night in December 1998.  Another execution followed on each of the next two Fridays that month, with two more in January 1999.

UPDATE: As reported in this press piece, the "South Carolina’s Supreme Court promised [on August 30] it would wait at least five weeks between putting inmates to death as the state restarts its death chamber with up to six executions looming."

Former Prez Trump details his proposals for "tough new sentences on illegal alien criminals"

This new Daily Signal article, headlined "Trump Pledges Death Penalty for Criminal Illegal Aliens Found Guilty of ‘Child or Woman Sex Trafficking’," reports on some of the sentencing comments today of former Prez Donald Trump when he was speaking at the southern border.  Here are excerpts:

With completed border wall to his right and unused construction materials to his left, former President Donald Trump told reporters Thursday in Arizona that if he wins the Nov. 5 election and returns to office in January, he will impose the death penalty on sex traffickers.

“We will seal the border, stop the invasion, and launch the largest deportation effort in American history. We will impose tough new sentences on illegal alien criminals,” Trump said, adding that “these include: [a] 10-year mandatory minimum sentence for anyone guilty of human smuggling; a guaranteed life sentence for anyone guilty of child trafficking; and a death penalty for anyone guilty of child or woman sex trafficking.”

Trump named other crimes that should result in the death penalty, such as “killing our police, sheriffs, Border Patrol, ICE, or [other] law enforcement officials.”

“Federal law allows for prosecutors to seek the death penalty against child sex traffickers if the victim is killed, or a life sentence if the victim survives,” Charles “Cully” Stimson, deputy director of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.

Some prior related posts:

• Former Prez Trump again talking up the death penalty as a way to address drug problems
• Spotlighting how a change in federal Administrations could lead to a big change in federal capital punishment administration 
• Noticing a notable capital shift in Democrats' campaign platform

Noticing a notable capital shift in Democrats' campaign platform

HuffPost has this notable new piece noting a notable new shift in one party's platform on a notable old punishment.  The piece headlined "Democrats Scrub Death Penalty Opposition From Campaign Platform: For the first time in more than a decade, the Democratic Party platform includes no mention of abolishing the death penalty."  Here are excerpts from a piece covering a lot of interesting ground:

In 2016, the Democratic Party became the country’s first major political party to formally call for abolishing the death penalty.  The party’s platform that year, released in the aftermath of a high-profile botched execution, called the punishment “cruel and unusual,” “arbitrary and unjust,” expensive to taxpayers and ineffective in deterring crime.  The document also nodded to the people exonerated from death row as evidence of the risk that the government will kill innocent people.

During the 2020 campaign, the Democratic platform reiterated support for abolishing the death penalty.  When Joe Biden entered office the following year, he became the first president to publicly oppose capital punishment — a dramatic shift from his time in the Senate, when he once bragged that the sweeping crime bill he was pushing did “everything but hang people for jaywalking.”

However, as his term winds down, Biden has little to show for the party’s promise to abolish capital punishment.  On Monday, the Democrats approved their 2024 platform, which includes no mention of the death penalty.  This year’s platform marks the first time since 2004 the platform has not mentioned the death penalty (the 2008 and 2012 platforms called for making the punishment less arbitrary)....  The Democratic National Committee did not respond to an email asking if the party still supports abolishing the death penalty....

Meanwhile, Republicans are gearing up for another execution spree if Trump wins reelection.  Project 2025, an 887-page document outlining plans for a second Trump presidency released by a coalition of conservative groups, suggests that Trump execute every remaining prisoner on death row.  The document also envisions pursuing the death penalty in cases involving violence and sexual abuse of children.  In a footnote, the document notes that this would require convincing the Supreme Court to overrule its previous findings on when the death penalty is appropriate, but that “the [Justice] department should place a priority on doing so.”  Trump reportedly plans to announce his support for expanding the death penalty to non-homicide crimes....

In addition to dropping any mention of the death penalty, this year’s Democratic platform noticeably backs away from several criminal justice reforms the party embraced in 2020, when the police killing of George Floyd prompted nationwide protests against police brutality.  The criminal justice section of the 2020 platform opens by declaring that the system is “failing” to keep people safe and deliver justice.  It contrasts the promise of America as the “land of the free” with the reality that the U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world and calls for “dramatically” reducing the number of people held in prisons and jails.

The 2020 platform includes support for several specific policies that are either absent from the 2024 platform or have been considerably toned down, including: ending life-without-parole sentences for people under 21, banning police from using chokeholds, decriminalizing cannabis, eliminating cash bail and repealing mandatory minimum sentences.

This year’s platform makes no mention of mass incarceration.  Instead, it describes the need to “fund the police” and touts DOJ funding for more police officers.  The platform claims Biden “took action to enhance public trust” by signing a “historic” executive order directing federal law enforcement agencies to ban chokeholds “unless deadly force is authorized” — a move described by civil rights groups as only a first step on police reform.

Prior related post:

• Spotlighting how a change in federal Administrations could lead to a big change in federal capital punishment administration 

Notable battle over death row defendant's innocence claim in Missouri

The New York Times has this new piece, headlined "Prosecutors to Face Off Over Innocence Claim by Prisoner on Death Row," reporting on the people behind a notable legal fight surrounding a defendant scheduled to be executed by the state of Missouri next month.  Here is how it starts:

A man facing execution in Missouri next month will be in court on Wednesday for what could be his last chance to prove his innocence.

The guilt of the man, Marcellus Williams, has been challenged for years, and he has come close to execution twice. But the hearing on Wednesday in St. Louis County will be the first time that a court will consider DNA evidence that could exonerate him.

The case is notable because it has put two law enforcement officials, the local prosecutor and the state attorney general, on opposite sides. The prosecutor, Wesley Bell, supports Mr. Williams’s bid for exoneration and has filed a 63-page motion to overturn his conviction. The attorney general, Andrew Bailey, has argued that Wednesday’s hearing should not even take place.

Mr. Bell, a Democrat, recently defeated U.S. Representative Cori Bush in the Democratic primary for her House seat in a heavily Democratic district, so he will very likely be heading to Congress in January. Mr. Bailey, a Republican who was appointed to his office midterm to fill a vacancy, fended off a primary challenge this month and is also likely to win the general election in the deeply red state.

In his short time in office, Mr. Bailey has opposed three wrongful-conviction claims, going so far as to try to keep people in prison after they have been exonerated. In the Williams case, he has asked both the trial court and the State Supreme Court to block the hearing.

UPDATE: Thanks to a helpful commentor, I see there is new breaking news in this case: "Missouri death row inmate agrees to new plea in deal that calls for life without parole." The latest:

A Missouri death row inmate on Wednesday dropped his innocence claim and entered a new no-contest plea in an agreement that calls for a revised sentence of life in prison without parole.

But the Missouri Attorney General’s Office opposes the new consent judgment and will appeal in an effort to move ahead with the scheduled Sept. 24 execution of Marcellus Williams.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Via CBS/AP, "Missouri Supreme Court blocks agreement that would have halted execution of death row inmate Marcellus Williams"

Notable new DPIC analysis of exonerations for those sentenced to death

The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) has this notable new analysis of death row exonerations. Here is how the report, which is titled "New Analysis: Innocent Death-Sentenced Prisoners Wait Longer than Ever for Exoneration," gets started:

On July 1, after waiting 41 years for his name to be cleared, Larry Roberts became the 200th person exonerated from death row.  A new Death Penalty Information Center analysis finds that Mr. Roberts’ experience illustrates a troubling trend: for innocent death-sentenced prisoners, the length of time between wrongful conviction and exoneration is increasing.  In the past twenty years, the average length of time before exoneration has roughly tripled, and 2024 has the highest-ever average wait before exoneration, at 38.7 years.  Our research suggests that two of the factors contributing to this phenomenon are procedural rules restricting prisoner appeals and resistance by state officials to credible claims of innocence.