The Eleventh Circuit has stayed the execution of Florida Death Row inmate John Ferguson, a paranoid schizophrenic, a day after it vacated its previous stay and sent Ferguson’s attorneys rushing to the U.S. Supreme Court for emergency action.
Read the Order that stopped the October 23, 2012, execution here.
These are temporary holds while more
As I type this, the latest news on Florida Death Row Inmate John Ferguson is that he has ordered, and may be eating right now, a last meal of a chicken sandwich and sweet tea.
Or maybe that’s already happened, and he’s being prepared for execution.
Hat tip to the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty for keeping an online execution schedule, which we’ve reviewed and noticed that Ohio is beating even Texas in capital punishment in the upcoming months — Ohio has 9 executions set; Texas has 8; Pennsylvania, Florida, and South Dakota each have one execution on their
Robert Towery was executed by the State of Arizona on March 8, 2012. No one would know better than Mr. Towery about how life is on Death Row as execution approaches.
His diary of the last 30 days on Arizona’s Death Row, on Death Watch, has been published as an ebook on Amazon.com and it’s
Here are ten (10) things that you might not know about Florida’s Death Row (facts courtesy of the Florida Department of Corrections):
1. The Executioner gets paid $150.00 to kill someone in a State of Florida execution.
2. There are three Death Rows in Florida. Women* facing capital punishment live in Lowell, Florida, at
This week, a new study was released on the state of Death Row here in America, surveying both the various state death rows as well as federal. Here are some interesting facts from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row USA quarterly report, Spring 2012 edition:
1. Larry Ray Swearingen, Texas Death Row
Larry Swearingen maintains his innocence and his attorneys are fighting to have some tribunal hear what they are arguing is new evidence, uncovered since his trial, that proves Larry Swearingen is innocent of the killing of a Texas coed, Melissa Trotter – this includes both DNA evidence and circumstantial
We’ve written about the conditions over on California’s Death Row and how at least one inmate has made the news requesting the death penalty because life would be better for him on Death Row rather than serving life imprisonment at another California facility. (Read our posts about Billy Joe Johnson here.)
Now, a
On Texas Death Row, Henry Watkins "Hank" Skinner is fighting to have DNA testing done of evidence that he argues will support his claims of innocence in the beating death of his girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two grown-up sons back in 1993.
In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion that Skinner could proceed
The United State Supreme Court has just stayed the execution of Duane Edward Buck, and an excellent article providing the details of Mr. Buck’s case – from crime to stay – can be found at The Texas Tribune, in a piece written by Brandi Grissom entitled "Supreme Court Grants Stay of Duane Buck Execution."