News Update 4.16.07
North Carolina
The News and Observer challenges the General Assembly to stop pushing doctors and nurses around and have the courage to vote for a moratorium.
At the end of this article, note that the Attorney General’s Office has not always been so willing to drop the charges against innocent defendants.
Elsewhere
The Birmingham News calls on Alabama to provide counsel for inmates on death row. Alabama and New Hampshire (which has no one on death row) are the only states that do not provide attorneys to help inmates with their complicated post-conviction appeals.
The California Supreme Court takes a new approach to determining whether defendants are mentally retarded for purposes of death penalty eligibility. Court considers multiple measurements of IQ, not just the defendant’s full-scale IQ score.
The Dallas Morning News comes out against capital punishment – reversing its position after more than 100 years. After cases highlighting innocence among the convicted and possibly even the executed, “We do not believe that any legal system devised by inherently flawed human beings can determine with moral certainty the guilt of every defendant convicted of murder. That is why we believe the state of Texas should abandon the death penalty – because we cannot reconcile the fact that it is both imperfect and irreversible.”
The federal government is continuing its death march across states without capital punishment, this time in Hawai’i.
In the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, it doesn’t matter whether you’re right or wrong, it matters who the judges are. Study shows that justices appointed by Republican presidents vote to deny relief in capital cases 85% of the time while Democrats grant some kind of relief in 75% of cases.
Nice blog!
Thanks for reading!