Capital punishment

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Nebraska has become the latest state to repeal the death penalty. Unlike most states, it has a single legislature, and after passing the repeal bill 32-15 (after previous votes were 30-16 and 30-13; apparently all bills in Nebraska need to be voted on three times before they are passed), the Governor vetoed the bill, and the legislature barely overrode the veto, 30-19. Interestingly, it was a coalition of Republican legislatures that led the charge, despite the GOP governor's vehement opposition (he tweeted today in response to the override vote "My words cannot express how appalled I am that we have lost a critical tool to protect law enforcement and Nebraska families.")

[Tyrhael]

"My words cannot express how appalled I am that we have lost a critical tool to protect law enforcement and Nebraska families."

I'm confused about this statement: those sentenced to death are done so after their capture and conviction. As ones convicted would have already been apprehended, surely they would no longer pose any danger to law enforcement and Nebraska families, as they would be locked up in prison? Because of that, I don't see how the governor is saying that capital punishment is important for protecting them. Is the argument supposed to be that fear of being sentenced to death would be more likely to dissuade criminals from doing heinous things to police and families, whereas the maximum possible sentencing "only" being life imprisonment would be less persuasive? I assume that those who Nebraska would previously have sentenced to death would now likely get life imprisonment or a lengthy term in prison with the hopes of rehabilitation, so it's not the case that they would be out on the streets any time soon as a potential threat to the safety of law enforcement and families. What, then, does the governor mean?

Would anyone mind explaining what they think he's trying to say, and if my previous paragraph relies on flawed assumptions?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Is the argument supposed to be that fear of being sentenced to death would be more likely to dissuade criminals from doing heinous things to police and families, whereas the maximum possible sentencing "only" being life imprisonment would be less persuasive?

Yes, I assume so. To the best of my knowledge, there is no data that supports this argument, but it is still consistently made.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Virginia is poised to end capital punishment.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... c-step?amp

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[Voronwë the Faithful]

I split off the unrelated osgiliation from this thread

[Voronwë the Faithful]

With Death Penalty Abolition, Virginia Becomes a Test Case For Progressive Reform

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[N.E. Brigand]

From the New York Times:

"4 Years After an Execution, a Different Man’s DNA Is Found on the Murder Weapon: Lawyers’ request to conduct additional DNA testing before Ledell Lee was executed had been denied. ... 'My dying words will always be, as it has been, "I am an innocent man,"' he told the BBC in an interview published on April 19, 2017 — the day before officials in Arkansas administered the lethal injection."

At the time of the execution, the spokesman for Arkansas's governor Asa Hutchison said after the execution that the "governor knows the right thing was done tonight: justice was carried out." And on a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court turned away Lee's request for a stay. Hutchison this week said that he was just doing his job and that it was the jury not him who had found Lee guilty. Hutchison also noted the new evidence is "inconclusive."

He's right about the DNA testing. It pretty clearly shows that some other unknown person's blood was on the weapon, but it doesn't necessarily exonerate Lee. (Although the Times reports that it "has long been established that Mr. Lee’s fingerprints did not match any of those at the scene.") But suppose it did. How would Hutchison now go about undoing his decision of four years ago?

[Beorhtnoth]

I believe a fundamental measure of how civilized is a country must be whether or not it has capital punishment. The taking of a human life is difficult to accept, but outside the category of self defence (and the parameters of that are debatable) there appears little justification for willfully ending a human existence.

[Inanna]

I believe a fundamental measure of how civilized is a country must be whether or not it has capital punishment. The taking of a human life is difficult to accept, but outside the category of self defence (and the parameters of that are debatable) there appears little justification for willfully ending a human existence.

I agree.

[Túrin Turambar]

The Japanese Government has confirmed that it has carried out three executions, the first since 2019. Japan and the United States are the two most developed democracies which use capital punishment, and I've always been fascinated by the differences in how the death penalty is treated in those countries (and internationally). Capital punishment is relatively uncontroversial in Japan, it attracts little attention from either the domestic or foreign media, and the Government is famously reticent in revealing any details about it. A classic example is that the Japanese Government never reveals execution dates in advance, even to condemned prisoners. The prisoner is told on the day of the execution, and their family and the general public is only told after the sentence has been carried out. Some of Japan's death row prisoners are suing the government to change this practice, although I don't like their chances of success. It is notoriously difficult to win against the State in Japanese courts - conviction rates in criminal trials exceed 99%.

There's an interesting discussion to be had on the differences between Confucian and Western countries - another example is the treatment of the Royal Family in the media in the U.K. and Japan. I think that the U.S., like other western liberal democracies, doesn't have the cultural background to do capital punishment 'properly', and I suspect it may sooner or later abandon it for this reason.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I debated whether to put this here or in the Supreme Court thread, because it is unusual for this court to make any decisions that even potentially make it harder to put someone to death, but ultimately I decided it should go here.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

[Sunsilver]

One person (AFTLOECO) commented: "Veterinary medicine won't even approve for animal euthanasia because it is torturous. This was inhumane."

[Voronwë the Faithful]

The State Public Defender’s office and several civil rights groups and individuals today filed an original writ petition in the Supreme Court — Office of the State Public Defender v. Bonta — claiming “[e]xtensive empirical evidence demonstrates that California’s capital punishment scheme is administered in a racially discriminatory manner and violates the equal protection provisions of the state Constitution.” They ask the court to declare the scheme to be unconstitutional as applied and to “bar[ ] the prosecution, imposition, or execution of sentences of death throughout the State of California.” (News release here.)

The petition summarizes its evidence this way: “Black defendants are up to 8.7 times more likely to be sentenced to death than all other defendants. Latino defendants are up to 6.2 times more likely to be sentenced to death than all other defendants. And defendants of all races are up to 8.8 times more likely to be condemned when at least one of the victims is White.”

[N.E. Brigand]

The SCOTUS has agreed to take a case regarding the constitutionality of Oklahoma's lethal injection procedure. This comes just a few days after the court refused to stay the executions involved, and one of the inmates who was challenging the procedure was put to death. The three remaining inmates who brought the challenge are all scheduled to be put to death before the case will be heard by the court. Richard E. Glossip is currently scheduled to die next Thursday; John M. Grant has an execution date of February 19; and Benjamin Cole, is scheduled to die March 5. They will likely move quickly to move for stays but because it only takes four justices to agree to hear a case, but five to order a stay, it is entirely possible that all three will be put to death before the case is ever heard by the court (in which I would guess that it would be dismissed as moot, although nel would know better than I).

I don't know for sure. You may have seen this article, highlighting the 4 votes vs. 5 issue, and the concept of a "courtesy 5th vote" - not required by any actual law or Supreme Court rule.

Death of all petitioners usually moots a case unless the cause of action survives the petitioners' deaths. In this case, because the claim deals with the manner by which petitioners are to die, it's difficult to understand how the claim would survive. So, if no stay is extended to Glossip, Grant, and Cole, it seems to me that the clearest path to keep the claim alive would be for another Oklahoma inmate to have his execution scheduled by March 5, but to take place somewhat later in the year. The Court will substitute his name on the caption and move smoothly along.

I think this situation is one that should be addressed formally in the Supreme Court rules. I can understand the rationale behind requiring five justices for a stay; it makes sense that a majority, not minority, of the Court is required to intervene in a state's criminal justice mechanism - particularly at the 11th hour, after the petitioner has ordinarily received 1-3+ decades of legal process. But if the entire Court is prepared to sit to hear a case, it seems sensible that the Court should take reasonable measures to keep the parties to that dispute alive.

The capital punishment case of Richard Glossip, who has already "eaten his last meal three times" (that's per Wikipedia), has returned to the Supreme Court, which agreed in January to consider a new petition from him next fall. In an unusual twist, yesterday the (Republican-controlled) state of Oklahoma asked SCOTUS to block a state court that ruled that the state can proceed with his execution. Apparently over the past nine years, the state has come to accept that there was "grave prosecutorial misconduct" when he was convicted in 1998 (and again in 2004) of a 1997 murder. Because neither Glossip nor Oklahoma is arguing for his execution, the Court has appointed an amicus curiae to do so (that brief won't be filed until July).

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Thanks for highlighting this (I'm impressed that you pulled up that exchange that I had with nerdanel back in 2015).

I don't believe that I have ever seen the words "Brief for Respondent in Support of Petitioner" before. I will be very interested to see what happens, and particularly how vigorously Christopher Michel (the lawyer appointed as the amicus) argues in favor of moving forward with the execution.