Frances Newton's execution remains set for Friday.

Frances Newton, condemned for the 1987 murder of her husband and two young children, was a step closer to execution Friday after the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed her latest application for writ of habeas corpus, saying she had presented no new evidence to warrant a stay.

Her attorneys argue otherwise. Ms. Newton maintains her innocence. Her husband's parents don't want her to be executed:

by TChris

The Washington Post uses the tragedy of Lena Baker's execution to argue that courts and juries cannot be entrusted with the power to take a life:

It is tempting to believe that these tragedies don't happen anymore, that the death penalty now is more protective of innocent life. ...

Yet injustice is a resilient pestilence that -- like drug-resistant bacteria -- has myriad ways of defeating the best human attempts to eliminate it. And Americans who believe the death penalty is foolproof are simply kidding themselves. DNA testing has caused many people to be freed from death row, illustrating the fallibility of even modern trials. And recently prosecutors in St. Louis reopened the case of a man executed by the state of Missouri back in 1995 -- no longer being convinced that the state had killed the right person. As long as the death penalty persists, cases like Ms. Baker's -- where recompense is impossible -- are inevitable.

by TChris

Justice Stevens, speaking in Chicago, called attention to the “pro-death bias” of juries and judges who decide whether to punish a crime with death:

Most judges who preside at capital trials are elected, creating a "subtle bias in favor of death" -- since it's hard to face reelection having given a break to a killer. The jury selection process does the same. Prosecutors question jurors at length about their willingness to impose death; this creates an imbalance in juries, when prosecutors strike those with anxiety about capital punishment, and it creates an atmosphere “in which jurors are likely to assume that their primary task is to determine the penalty for a presumptively guilty defendant.”

Those same concerns are echoed in this TalkLeft post.

Death penalty juries rarely reflect the larger community because courts exclude potential jurors who don’t believe that death is an appropriate sanction in any case. As TalkLeft argued here, juries should be “life qualified,” not “death qualified.” Better yet, it's time to end our reliance on death as an acceptable punishment.

The Washington Post today calls the bill to streamline death penalty appeals, introduced in the Senate by Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) and in the House by Daniel E. Lungren (R-Calif.), "an unmitigated disaster."

Habeas corpus is the centuries-old device by which inmates challenge the legality of their detentions. In modern times it has become the essential vehicle by which convicts on death row or serving lengthy prison terms attack their state-court convictions. Many innocent people owe their freedom to their ability to file habeas petitions.

Yet in many death cases, the most drastic versions of the bill would eliminate federal review entirely. Even where they didn't do that, they would create onerous procedural roadblocks and prevent federal courts from considering key issues. They would bar federal courts from reviewing most capital sentencing and create arbitrary timetables for federal appeals courts to handle these cases.

The Post points out [as I did here]that "chief justices of the nation's state court systems have voted overwhelmingly to urge Congress to slow down."

Nancy Goldstein has a new article up on the Equal Justice Initiative and Alabama's death row. She asks, "If you are a poor person of color accused of a capital crime in Alabama, what stands between you and the death penalty?"

This very fine non-profit is trying to turn back the state's bad habit of routinely denying poor people decent legal representation, and then sentencing them to death without access to decent post-conviction appeal. The article also brings up the question of states' rights vs. federal oversight, particularly in Alabama, where almost all socially progressive decisions have been federally mandated, and where voters show a more than subtle inclination towards returning to the days of Jim Crow

by TChris

It's easy to understand why Lena Baker shot her employer.

In her one-day trial, Ms. Baker, who was black, testified that E. B. Knight, a white man she had been hired to care for, had held her against her will and threatened to shoot her. She said she grabbed a gun and shot him when he raised a metal bar to strike her.

Sadly, it's also easy to understand why, in 1945, she was convicted.

She was convicted by an all-white, all-male jury.

Sixty years after she was electrocuted, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles granted her a pardon. While that decision comes sixty years too late to benefit Baker, it may help ease the pain for family members who have labored to clear her name. More information about Lena Baker can be found here and here.

posted by Last Night in Little Rock

Speaking to the ABA this weekend, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens spoke of "serious flaws" in the death penalty as reported by Gina Holland of the Associated Press.

Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens steered the debate over President George W. Bush's nominee to a new subject: capital punishment, sharply condemning the country's death penalty system.

The Court has been closely divided in death row cases, with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor often in the middle.

Stevens' remarks were not prepared and were motivated by the ever increasing number of exonerations of the actually innocent from Death Row.

The American Bar Association is having its annual meeting in Chicago. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens spoke to the Group Saturday, and was sharply critical of the death penalty:

Stevens stopped short of calling for an end to the death penalty, but he said there are many problems in the way it is used. Stevens said DNA evidence has shown "that a substantial number of death sentences have been imposed erroneously. . . . It indicates that there must be serious flaws in our administration of criminal justice," he said.

It is death penalty cases, not abortion cases, that dominate the caseload of the Supreme Court.

In their last term, which ended in June, justices overturned the death sentences of four inmates, ruled that states cannot put to death killers who were not at least 18 years old at the time of the crime and held that it is unconstitutional to force defendants to appear before juries in chains during a trial's penalty phase.

Stevens was also critical of the death-qualifying jury selection process, the admission of victim-impact evidence and the lack of competent counsel in death cases.

State Court chief justices from around the country had their annual conference this week. Among the resolutions passed was one opposing the Streamlined Procedures Act, a bill that would limit death penalty appeals. The only "nay" vote came from Wallace Jefferson, the chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, who said he hadn't had time to study the bill.

This bill is a bad idea. It would in effect kill habeas rights for prisoners - the chance for federal court review of a state court conviction and sentence.

Prisoners on death row generally reach federal courts using a legal petition known as habeas corpus — a centuries-old method of challenging allegedly illegal imprisonment. The petition gives an inmate a day in court to assert that his constitutional rights were violated at trial, leading to a serious error in the case.

The pending measures "may preclude state defendants in both capital and noncapital" cases from seeking relief in the federal courts "and may deprive the federal courts of jurisdiction in the vast majority of these matters, all with unknown consequences for the state courts and the administration of justice," the chief justices said in their resolution, passed at the group's annual meeting, in Charleston, S.C.

As I said here, this bill gets it a** backwards:

President Bush has sent a letter, accompanying an award, to the founder of the Crips gang who is on Death Row in California. The letter praises death row inmate Stanley "Tookie" Williams for demonstrating "the outstanding character of America."

The irony to me is that Stanley "Tookie" Williams deserves not only the award and letter, but to be granted clemency and taken off death row, and that Bush probably had no idea who Tookie is.

Come on, President Bush, do the right thing here. Pick up the phone, call Gov. Arnie, and tell him you think it would be the courageous and right thing to do to grant clemency to Tookie. You know, just one Republican friend talking to another. No pressure, just your friendly suggestion. If it doesn't feel quite right, maybe you could ask Karl Rove to make the call for you.

California death row inmates are alone and locked in their cells 20 of 24 hours a day. So how would one get a syringe and heroin?

A convicted murderer awaiting execution at San Quentin State Prison has died of an apparent heroin overdose -- making him California's first inmate to OD on Death Row.

Michael Camacho, the L.A. deputy district attorney who prosecuted Rodriguez for the 1999 crimes, said the apparent overdose didn't surprise him. Rodriguez had a history of drug use, he said, and drugs are easy to get in prison -- even on Death Row. "The accessibility of narcotics is rampant in the Department of Corrections, even though they would prefer not to admit it,'' Camacho said.

Vermont jurors have returned the first death penalty verdict in 50 years in that state in a federal case.

In 2001 Fell had agreed to plead guilty in exchange for a sentence of life without parole. But that deal was rejected by then-U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, who insisted on the death penalty, in part because of the urgings of Fell's relatives.

The last execution in Vermont was in 1954. Another defendant was sentenced to death in 1957, but the sentence was later commuted. In their closing arguments Wednesday the prosecution said Fell's crimes were cold and calculated while the defense said his wrongdoing stemmed from a childhood of abuse.

After the verdict, the defense lawyer read a statement to the jury from the defendant:

"He respects your decision. He appreciates your hard work and wants to tell you and the family of his sincere remorse. He did not want to do it at any other time publicly as it would be construed to be less genuine," the lawyer said.