by Kent Scheidegger · Oct 13, 2020 3:46 pm
What do statutes of limitations and the constitutional ban on “cruel and unusual punishments” have to do with each other? The logical answer is “nothing.” But the law follows strange paths, and the two issues crossed in today’s Supreme Court argument on the statute of limitations for rape in the military justice system. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Oct 5, 2020 9:17 am
Today is the First Monday in October, the first day of the new term for the U.S. Supreme Court. As usual, the new cases the Court has taken up in its opening conference were announced last week, see this post, and today’s orders list contains a very long list of cases turned down. Along with shooting down the Stairway to SCOTUS suit against Led Zeppelin, there are a few other items of interest from the orders list. Continue reading . . .
by Kent Scheidegger · Sep 29, 2020 2:10 pm
The nomination of Seventh Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court has focused new attention on a 1998 law review article she co-authored with John Garvey, Catholic Judges in Capital Cases. This article is unlikely to be a roadblock to her confirmation, but it does raise a question that needs to be answered.
Right out of the gate, we should note what Professor Garvey, the senior author of the article, wrote in the WaPo last week. “It would hardly be reasonable to hold Barrett responsible for everything we said back then, when she was still a law student and the junior partner in the endeavor.” Quite right. Even as an indication of her views at the time, the junior partner does not typically decide the positions that will be taken. Further, one’s views on issues may change with time and experience. That was 22 years ago, and a lot of water has passed under her bridge since then. Continue reading . . .
by Bill Otis · Aug 30, 2020 2:25 pm
Joe Biden’s stance on capital punishment is short and to the point: “Abolish the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.” See his Policy Statement, summarized here.
And it’s true that support for the death penalty has been falling since about the mid-Nineties, at least until a couple of years ago. But Mr. Biden is still missing the point, politically as well as morally.
by Kent Scheidegger · Aug 28, 2020 4:53 pm
The U.S. Department of Justice announced that the execution of Keith Nelson was completed today, and he was pronounced dead at 4:32 pm EDT.
In October 1999, Nelson told an acquaintance that he wanted to kidnap, rape, torture, and kill a young girl he had seen in Kansas City, Kansas. Shortly thereafter, Nelson parked his white pickup truck outside the home of 10-year-old Pamela Butler, who was rollerblading nearby. Continue reading . . .
by Bill Otis · Aug 26, 2020 6:46 pm
Jeff Sessions is a man of honor and did a superb job restoring a sober, effective and non-politicized Justice Department. But Attorney General Bill Barr leaves nothing to be desired. As this AP story notes:
With the execution [today] of Lezmond Mitchell for the grisly slayings of a 9-year-old and her grandmother, the federal government under the pro-death penalty president has now carried out more executions in 2020 than it had in the previous 56 years combined.
Lest there be any doubt about the justice of this execution, the details of the killing should lay that to rest.
by Kent Scheidegger · Aug 26, 2020 9:19 am
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit yesterday denied a stay of execution for Keith Nelson. According to the DOJ Press Release of June 15, “Keith Dwayne Nelson kidnapped a 10-year-old girl rollerblading in front of her home, and in a forest behind a church, raped her and strangled her to death with a wire.”
Nelson now claims he will suffer too much pain in the very brief interval between the time he is injected with a massive overdose of pentobarbital and the time he becomes insensate to pain as a result. Continue reading . . .
by Michael Rushford · Aug 14, 2020 10:55 am
Thirteen years after his conviction for strangling 10 women to death, the California Supreme Court will finally hear the direct appeal of Los Angeles serial killer Chester Turner. City News Service reports that while Turner’s appeal will focus on his 2007 conviction and death sentence for the murders of ten women between the ages of 21 and 45 between 1987 and 1998, in 2014 he was also convicted of the murders of four additional women over the same period. DNA evidence linked Turner to the killings.
by Kent Scheidegger · Jul 17, 2020 8:45 am
Number three in USDOJ’s murderers row, Dustin Honken, is set for execution today. Honken was a drug trafficker who murdered a dealer turned informant. He also murdered three other people in the household–a mother and her two children aged 10 and 6. He later murdered a fifth person.
Early this morning, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit denied a stay pending appeal of Honken’s claim under the Administrative Procedure Act. See this post from Wednesday for a brief description of that claim and the District Judge’s rejection of it.
by Bill Otis · Jul 16, 2020 3:43 pm
Relatively unnoticed among her several frenetic attempts to come to the aid of a child killer was Judge Tanya Chutkan’s order (wiped away by the Supreme Court last night) to stay the Purkey execution because the drug to be used had not been approved by the FDA as “safe” and effective, and had not been prescribed by a physician. Kent analysed this attempt here, but there is more that usefully could be said.
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