Fact Issues - Death Penalty

Death Penalty Law springs out of two wells in two forums:  the judiciary and the legislature, at both the state and federal levels.

Consider the continuing interplay on the  proper implementation of the Florida Death Penalty between SCOTUS and the Florida Supreme Court in Hurst v. State and Poole v. State, as one example.   

This month, the question is raised once again about what the condemned actually experience when undergoing lethal injection, and whether or not this constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. It appears that the executioners’ perspective on what is taking place and those of the execution witnesses may be far, far different.  Read, “Executioners sanitized accounts

Founded in 2012, the National Registry of Exonerations (NRE) is a joint effort of the (1) Newkirk Center for Science & Society at University of California Irvine, the (2) University of Michigan Law School, (3) Michigan State University College of Law; and (4) the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law.

The

Today’s hearing in the Markeith Loyd death penalty case resulted in the court’s ruling that the Florida capital case will not go to trial until sometime in Spring 2021, at the earliest.

You can watch a video from a part of these proceedings, where Terence Lenamon is in the courtroom (this is not a virtual

This week, Terence Lenamon filed the following motion in the death penalty trial of Markeith Loyd and the full text has been made available as a public service in his Online Library:

Defendant’s Motion for Compensation of Jurors at Current Wage or Minimum Wage in Light of Recent Events Involving COVID-19 Which Have a Direct

Famed Wyoming attorney Gerry Spence founded the Trial Lawyers College several years ago, “… to help attorneys stand up for the rights of ordinary people and develop their skills as trial lawyers.”  The TLCis dedicated to training a new kind of attorney—one who is courageous enough to develop his or her own

The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) has released its annual summary of how the death penalty fared in this country during the preceding year.  The full report is available online here.

Hallmarks from 2019 include the following:

  • New Hampshire became the 21st state to abolish capital punishment.
  • California put all executions on hold.
  • Indiana

In a capital case, there are two times when the issue of the accused’ mental health must be addressed;  first, at the criminal trial where the individual is facing a prosecutor who is seeking the death penalty as punishment upon conviction.  Second, when the convicted Death Row inmate is scheduled for execution.

Three Distinct Mental

This week, there was an Orlando Sentinel op-ed on police excessive force in the arrest of Markeith Loyd that is of interest.
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Entitled “The uncomfortable truth about the capture of Markeith Loyd, it is written by Rhetta Peoples, guest columnist for the Orlando Sentinel,  and a “… journalist for the Black Press,