The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/capital-punishment/)
Lawmakers, advocates, and Pope Francis have pleaded for clemency on behalf of Ernest Lee Johnson, whose intellectual disability many believe makes his execution unconstitutional.
The delay is part of an ongoing debate over whether the state is violating an inmate’s rights by refusing to allow a spiritual advisor to lay hands on him during his execution.
A Texas man will have his execution delayed after the Supreme Court granted his request to block his execution because the Texas Department of Criminal Justice won’t allow the man’s pastor to “lay hands” on him and pray during his execution.
Lengthy appeals and the growing number of states that are refusing to impose the death penalty have turned the nation’s death rows into high-cost senior citizens facilities ― with many of the inmates suffering from dementia or other serious illness.
A California Supreme Court decision ruled that unanimity and reasonable doubt concepts do not apply to the death penalty phase of sentencing.
The recent decision to reject seven death penalty cases, as well as an absence of new cases and an ongoing review of death penalty practices, has many hoping for a change in federal policy.
The moratorium cites concerns about about the “arbitrariness” in the application of the death penalty, its disparate impact on people of color, and the troubling number of exonerations in capital and other serious cases. Just a year ago, the Trump administration restarted federal executions after a 17-year-hiatus.
Executions in South Carolina have been halted by the state Supreme Court until the Department of Corrections can offer a firing squad as a choice for death row inmates. Many are looking to how other states have offered the method of execution to see what this would look like.
Despite saying that he would work to eliminate the death penalty on a federal level, President Biden remains silent and avoids action.
The First Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev after finding the trial judge wrongly kept evidence of a triple homicide committed by Tsarnaev’s brother, Tamerlan, and did not ensure the jury was free of bias due to media coverage.