As part of our invitation to other bloggers to guest here on the Death Penalty Blog, Terry and I are happy to publish the following article sent to us by Nancy Farrell, who writes for the career-advice website, Criminal Justice Degrees Guide. Here, without edit or change, is Nancy’s article for your consideration. Thanks, Nancy!
Terry Lenamon / Reba Kennedy
Oregon Death Row’s Haugen Waives Appeals, Wants to Be Executed. Why?
Posted in On Death Row
Oregon’s Death Row only has around 35 inmates, a very small number when compared to neighboring California with its Death Row population of 719 people. We don’t hear much about the death penalty in Oregon — after all Oregon hasn’t executed anyone since 1997.
Gary Haugen is changing all that. As an Oregon Death…
Here’s One Way to Stop the Death Penalty: Have the Prosecutor Take It Off the Table
Posted in Players in a Death Penalty Case
Over in Arizona, there is a big, bad murder case moving through the system.
Seems that a man named Jonathan Edward Vandergriff, along with Staci Lynn Barbosa, his co-defendant, were facing murder charges as well as child abuse by domestic violence, sexual assault of a minor under the age of 15, and sexual…
California 700+ Death Row Gets Good News: 2006 Moratorium on Death Penalty Will Continue For Now
Posted in Death Penalty - States
Right now, the State of California has over 700 people living on its Death Row. According to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, 260 are white; 255 are African American; 158 are Hispanic American; and 38 are not categorized.
You can read the complete California Death Row Inmate list here, which as of…
Update of Florida Court Overhaul: Amendment Passed That Kills the Deal
Posted in Death Penalty - States
Yesterday, the Florida Senate passed an amendment to HJR 7111 — an amendment co-sponsored by 10 Republican Senators – which served to remove by amendment the earlier bill which split the Florida Supreme Court and created a new Florida high court for criminal matters (as described in our post last week). Read the …
Nationally-Known Psychologist Responds to Texas Board Sanctioning of Dr. Death, George Denkowski
Posted in Players in a Death Penalty Case
Yesterday, we posted about a new development regarding mitigating factors in Texas and elsewhere: the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists has sanctioned George Denkowski, Ph.D., otherwise known as "Dr. Death," for his questionable evaluations of over a dozen men on Texas Death Row.
Dr. Death was argued to have used unscientific methods to…
Texas’ Dr. Death, George Denkowski, Sanctioned by Texas Board – 14 Death Row Inmates May Be Saved
Posted in Players in a Death Penalty Case
Back in January 2010, we first took note of something sinister happening over in Texas — media spotlights were revealing that over a dozen Texas Death Row inmates had had their IQ scores suspiciously bumped up to a sufficiently high number that they were eligible for the death penalty and execution. (Read that post for…
Will Florida’s Overhaul of Criminal Court System Become Reality? The New Criminal High Court Just Passed Into Law
Posted in Players in a Death Penalty Case
Yesterday, legislation passed in the Florida Senate to make radical changes to the state criminal justice system – and this will have a major impact upon how death penalty cases are handled here in the State of Florida if the Powers That Be can get this through the necessary hurdle of a constitutional amendment.
All…
New North Carolina Study Finds Death Penalty Flawed – Professors Move To Stop Capital Punishment in NC
Posted in Death Penalty - States
One more scholarly effort can be placed onto that ever-growing stack of research studies that find capital punishment is simply untrustworthy, that it is procedurally flawed. Never mind the morality. Or mercy. Or the growing problem of finding drugs for those lethal injections …. The study nixes the death penalty before these issues even arise.
Matthew Robinson of …
Lethal Injection Cocktails: Cruel and Unusual Punishment?
Posted in Execution Methods
Back in 2009, there was a three part series of posts here on the Death Penalty Blog, discussing the lethal injection cocktail as it was commonly used at the time: in Florida, this meant a combo of first, thiopental sodium ; second, pancuronium bromide; and lastly, potassium chloride.
From that series (please go to …