Death Penalty

Top Official gets Death Sentence for Bad Chinese Food

Even for China, the sentence is an unusually harsh one. In the wake of international scandals over contamination of food products shipped from China, the former head of the country’s top food and drug safety agency was sentenced to death today. Zheng Xiaoyu, 62, commissioner of China’s Food and Drug…

May 29, 2007 10:09 PM CDT

Court Rejects Ineffective Assistance Claim

The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld a federal judge’s decision to deny an evidentiary hearing to a death-row inmate who refused to allow mitigating evidence at his trial. A federal judge properly determined that Jeffrey Landrigan, who had petitioned for habeas relief, could not make out a colorable claim of…

May 14, 2007 4:47 PM CDT

N.J. Bill to Ban Death Penalty Advances

A New Jersey Senate committee has passed a bill to make the state the first to abolish the death penalty after reinstating it. If the measure passes, New Jersey will be the 13th state without a death penalty, according to the New York Times. The committee chairman predicted the full…

May 11, 2007 2:36 PM CDT

NJ May End Death Penalty, Other States Too?

In a move that could be influential elsewhere, New Jersey legislators will start considering this week whether to abolish the state’s death penalty and may well do so. If that happens, it will be the first time since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976 that a state…

May 8, 2007 8:33 PM CDT

Child Rape Death Penalty a Legislative ‘Tsunami’

Texas is a state known for its aggressive prosecution of death penalty cases and frequent executions, but even here some feel proposed legislation to provide for capital punishment of child rapists may go too far. Nonetheless, it is not the first such bill, reports Time magazine, citing already-on-the-books child rape…

May 7, 2007 11:52 PM CDT

Today in Legal History: Demonstrators Shot by Authorities at Haymarket, Kent State

On this day in 1886, someone among 200 or so workers at a labor rally near Chicago’s Haymarket Square threw a bomb into a group of 176 police officers. Police gunfire followed. When the smoke cleared, one officer lay dead, and six others died later, and 60 more were injured.…

May 4, 2007 5:01 PM CDT

Neb. Electrocution Stayed Pending Challenge

Acting on its own motion, the Nebraska Supreme Court has issued an order (PDF) staying the execution of a convicted murderer who says he wants to die. The court said it should not have issued a death warrant for Carey Dean Moore while a separate case was pending that claimed…

May 3, 2007 4:09 PM CDT

Rough Justice

Behind the scenes with the American advisers to the Iraq v. Saddam Hussein court

May 1, 2007 9:32 AM CDT

Today in Legal History: Guillotine First Used, Vt. Civil Unions First in U.S.

On this day in 1792, the guillotine reportedly was first used in France to execute a highwayman, Nicolas-Jacques Pelletier. At the time, despite its subsequent notoriety as a means of killing some 15,000 during the French Revolution, the guillotine was considered a swift, certain and more humane way of putting…

Apr 26, 2007 5:08 PM CDT

Chief Justice Complains of ‘Revisionist’ Spin

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy provided the crucial swing vote yesterday in three Supreme Court cases striking down the death sentences of Texas inmates, a New York Times article points out. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. argued in a dissent that the majority was putting an unwarranted spin on the…

Apr 26, 2007 2:25 PM CDT

Supreme Court Overturns Texas Death Sentences

They were based on faulty jury instructions that did not give sufficient weight to mitigating factors, according to three decisions issued today.

Apr 25, 2007 4:54 PM CDT

Today in Legal History: Library of Congress, War Prisoner Code, Forensic Evidence Misused

On this day in 1800, President John Adams approved a then-hefty $5,000 appropriation to establish the Library of Congress, 20 percent of which went for law books (mainly on British and international subjects). Today the largest library in the world, with a collection of well over 100 million items, the…

Apr 24, 2007 5:21 PM CDT

Report: Lethal Injection Cocktail Flawed

A scientific analysis concludes drugs used in lethal injections can cause excruciating pain. The drug cocktail is supposed to make the inmate unconscious before his muscles are paralyzed and death is induced. But sometimes the inmate remains alert but paralyzed, so he is unable to cry out in pain. The…

Apr 24, 2007 3:39 PM CDT

High Court to Hear Arguments in Insanity Case

On Wednesday, the lawyer for a Texas death-row inmate will argue before the U.S. Supreme Court that his client should not be executed because he cannot understand the link between his punishment and the murders he committed. Scott Panetti was sentenced to death for the 1992 murder of his in-laws…

Apr 16, 2007 6:29 PM CDT

Lawyers Argue Legality of ‘Suicide by Court’

Lawyers for Kentucky death-row inmate Marco Allen Chapman contend their client is trying to commit “suicide by court.” The state supreme court heard arguments yesterday in a case challenging the legality of Chapman’s sentence, the Associated Press reports. In 2004, he pleaded guilty to killing two children and asked for…

Apr 13, 2007 6:31 PM CDT