Sidebar With an Expert Capital Litigator
Last month, two death row inmates had their sentences changed to life without parole after authorities confirmed each suffers from severe mental illness. In Oregon, Robert James Acremant had his sentence changed after state experts confirmed his diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. (He still faces a death sentence in California on another charge.)
In North…
The pressure is building over in Illinois …. Governor Pat Quinn still has not made his decision on whether or not Illinois will abolish the death penalty. Not that he isn’t busy enough with massive blizzards, and a budget that’s broke, among other things.
Maybe he’s distracted, right? Maybe that is why in yesterday’s Chicago …
Seems Tennessee can’t find a supplier for its lethal injection executions using a three drug cocktail that includes sodium thiopental (guess they haven’t called Besse Medical), so pentobarbital is apparently being considered as a substitute.
According to its state website, Tennessee has a long execution history, with hanging and the electric chair as…
There is an amazing amount of news coverage focusing upon capital punishment today – and it’s focus is Iran. Right now, lawmakers in Iran – their legal representatives — are actually demanding that their political opposition leaders get the death penalty.
Why? Because these folk organized a number of anti-government rallies which took place yesterday in various cities throughout Iran, including Tehran. …
Scheduling executions for various states in this country continues to be in flux, primarily due to this continuing problem of having Hospira exit the marketplace as the supplier of sodium thiopental, a necessary component to the three-drug lethal injection method of execution.
However, the Death Penalty Information Center is doing a fine job of keeping…
As the Florida Capital Resource Center grows, stories like this will become more commonplace – but today, it’s a major victory we’re celebrating since the First District Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of allowing additional mitigation expertise in a pending prosecution where the death penalty is being sought.
As Terry puts it, "Our…
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) became the defendant in a civil suit filed this week by six Death Row inmates who face execution in Arizona (3 plaintiffs), California (2 plaintiffs), and Tennessee (1 plaintiff) as they seek a declaratory judgment from the federal judge presiding over the United States District Court for the District…
New Hampshire is holding two public hearings today in its House of Representatives (HR 147 at 10 o’clock, HR 162 at one o’clock) on two separate proposals to expand the death penalty. That’s right – in the midst of all the challenges across the country to capital punishment (Illinois, for example), there are still jurisdictions that…
On Tuesday, we learned the Associated Press had used the power of the press last week to discover that Besse Medical had been the supplier of sodium thiopental to Texas for use in its executions. Good work, AP.
The State of Texas fought to keep the identity of its new supplier secret – purportedly to protect the…
On January 21, 2011, via its website, Illinois drug manufacturer Hospira, Inc. fired a shot heard ’round the world as it announced in a short and sweet press release that it would no longer be making sodium thiopental (product name, Pentothal™). According to Hospira:
Hospira had intended to produce Pentothal at its Italian plant. … [W]e cannot
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