by Kent Scheidegger · Feb 14, 2020 4:52 pm
On January 29, California’s prison agency announced a pilot program to move some death row inmates out of San Quentin to one of five other prisons. The press has only picked up on it in the last few days. A lot of the reaction has been to statements in the press reports. The actual regulation was not easy to find, but after finding it I conclude that it is mostly implementing the initiative the people approved and I had a hand in writing. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Feb 13, 2020 10:18 am
Melissa Scavelli reports for KOKH:
According to officials, the state has found a reliable supply of drugs to resume executions by lethal injections.
The state said they will use an updated version of the previous protocol based on recommendations by the 2016 multicounty grand jury.
Midazolam, vecuronium bromide, and potassium chloride will once again be used officials said.
Midazolam is not the optimum choice. Resort to it is needed only because the “guerilla war against the death penalty” has succeeded in intimidating suppliers into cutting off the supply of barbiturates. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Feb 6, 2020 10:21 am
I received the hard copies of the Fall 2019 issue of Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law, v. 17 no. 1, yesterday. It includes a symposium on capital punishment. My contribution is online here.
Mine is the sole pro-death-penalty contribution, but one is vastly better than none, and none is the norm for politically incorrect viewpoints in academia. I thank Doug Berman, who genuinely cares about diversity of viewpoint, for the invitation.
by Kent Scheidegger · Feb 5, 2020 2:42 pm
Yesterday’s News Scan noted the case of Texas quintuple murderer Able Ochoa. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied his stay request Monday. Now he has gone to the U.S. Supreme Court, case No. 19-7572, stay application 19A876.
The reason that the highest court of the land should stop the execution of long overdue justice for a man who murdered five people in his own family, including his two baby daughters, is that the prison wouldn’t let him make a video for his clemency application. Really, I’m not making that up.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jan 23, 2020 10:06 pm
In 2016, in a case on remand from the U.S. Supreme Court, the Florida Supreme Court made a major error in the law of jury trial and capital sentencing, running roughshod over decades of precedent. That case was Hurst v. State, 202 So.2d 40 (Fla. 2016), on remand from Hurst v. Florida, 136 S.Ct. 616 (2016). Today, in State v. Poole, No. SC18-245, the state high court backs off from its Hurst opinion to the extent that it goes beyond what the U.S. Supreme Court required.
The framework for capital sentencing established by the Supreme Court in its 1976 and later decisions requires two additional steps before a convicted murderer can be sentenced to death. First, a fact-based “eligibility” finding must be made that at least one fact has been proved from a statutory list of factors beyond the basic elements of murder. Second, in the “selection” step, there must be a discretionary judgment that this is a case suitable for the death penalty, after considering mitigating as well as aggravating circumstances. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in Hurst and the 2002 case of Ring v. Arizona require a jury trial and proof beyond a reasonable doubt for the eligibility step and only for the eligibility step. Continue reading . . .
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