The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/capital-punishment/)
Capital punishment is inconsistent with the bedrock values of conservatism, declares the national manager of Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty. She says the group has picked up traction since it was launched nearly a decade ago, and now has supporters across the country.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit said a federal judge was wrong when he ruled that Ohio’s execution protocol is unconstitutional because it is likely to create the sensation of drowning after the first of three drugs is administered and burning when another drug is given.
Texas executed Mark Soliz for the 2010 home robbery and shooting death of a North Texas woman. Nine more executions are scheduled through December.
Billy Jack Crutsinger, 64, was executed Wednesday for the 2003 fatal stabbing of two women, an elderly mother and her daughter, who had angered him when they were unable to provide him with enough work at their home for him to sustain himself.
The White House and the Justice Department have drafted a plan to expedite the death penalty for mass shooters. It will be submitted to Congress next week but many Democrats will oppose it.
The state Supreme Court will hear arguments this week from four inmates who briefly were resentenced to life without parole when legislators approved the Racial Justice Act in 2009. The law was repealed four years later. Under the Act, condemned men and women could challenge their death sentences by using statistics to show that race tainted their trials.
Bowles was a serial killer who preyed on older gay men during an eight-month spree that left six dead. He received the death penalty for the 1994 murder of Walter Hinton, his last known victim.
Larry Swearingen was convicted of strangling Melissa Trotter, a community college student. He maintained his innocence until the end, challenging scientific evidence.
Stephen West was convicted in 1986 of fatally stabbing a mother and her daughter, 15. A relative of the victims criticized the 33-year delay in concluding the case. West’s lawyers say he was mentally ill.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit sent the case of Dexter Johnson back to district court. Johnson argues that he is intellectually disabled and ineligible for the death penalty under Supreme Court precedent.