The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/category/capital-punishment/)
The Supreme Court allowed Alabama to file papers in a death penalty case with information about execution drugs blacked out. On Monday, the justices agreed to unseal the documents.
Marion Wilson, 42, was executed in Georgia for the 1996 murder of Donovan Parks, 24, an off-duty corrections officer studying to become an inmate counselor. A flurry of last-minute appeals couldn’t save Wilson, who said that his co-defendant pulled the trigger.
Marion Wilson Jr. is set to die by lethal injection in Georgia on Thursday. Still, the death penalty is becoming rarer. There were 60 executions in 2005 but only 25 last year.
Much of the case record was sealed when the Supreme Court refused to grant a stay of execution for Alabama’s Christopher Price last month. The state’s claim that information about the case must be secret is “crazy,” says the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.
The New Hampshire Senate abolished the last death-penalty law in New England by voting to overturn a veto by Gov. Chris Sununu. While the state hasn’t executed anyone in 80 years, a man is on death row for murdering a police officer.
Christopher Price, 46, was put to death for the killing of a minister 28 years ago. The Supreme Court, in a 5-to-4 vote, rejected his appeal to use nitrogen gas in the execution.
The killer terrified the Tampa Bay area for eight months in 1984 as women began showing up dead, their bodies often left in gruesome poses. Law enforcement had few clues until the case of Lisa Noland, who survived one of Long’s attacks. She witnessed Thursday’s execution from the front row.
The moves by Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner to reverse death sentences in years-old convictions have raised concerns among law enforcement officials and victims’ advocates about whether his office has been transparent with victims’ families. Krasner, a former criminal defense attorney, has long made clear his opposition to capital punishment.
Don Johnson was executed in Tennessee for the 1984 suffocation of his wife, Connie. He initially blamed his wife’s slaying on a work-release inmate. In Alabama, Michael Brandon Samra was put to death for taking part in the killings of four people, including two young girls.
A new Justice Department legal opinion could lead to more executions in the U.S. by easing the availability of drugs used to carry out lethal injections. The opinion says the Food and Drug Administration lacks the authority to regulate drugs or other items used in connection with the death penalty.