Capital Punishment

RECENT POSTS

April 4, 2011 | 9:28 AM | By

California man’s death sentence reinstated

Justice Thomas wrote the opinion.

The US Supreme Court restarted their week this Monday by overturning a 9th Circuit decision to throw out the death sentence of California’s Scott Pinholster. KSRO reports:

Pinholster was convicted in 1984 of brutally beating and stabbing two men to death when they interrupted a burglary he and two accomplices were committing in Los Angeles.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out Pinholster’s death sentence because his lawyer did not give a jury evidence of mental illness during the penalty phase of his murder trial. The San Francisco-based court said that evidence might have persuaded the jury to reject the death sentence.

The high court, in a decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas, overturned that ruling. “There is no reasonable probability that the additional evidence Pinholster presented in his state habeas proceeding would have changed the jury’s verdict,” Thomas said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, wrote that if Pinholster’s lawyer had handled his trial better, it is “not a foregone conclusion” that the jury would have sentenced him to death.

FILED UNDER: Courts, Capital Punishment, US Supreme Court
March 7, 2011 | 8:33 AM | By

Lethal injection suit delayed

Judge Jeremy Fogel

The legal conflict over California’s lethal injection process is facing a new delay that will push the case into the summer. Arguments in the case, over whether the state’s process for executing inmates violates the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment, will have to wait for a new lethal injection team to be chosen and trained at San Quentin. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation recently installed a new warden at the prison and state regulations call for a warden to hire his or her own execution team.

Federal District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel, who has been presiding over the case for over four years and has seen it delayed by numerous complications, told lawyers on Friday that he understood the situation, but still wants to expedite the process. Fogel had hoped to wrap up the case early this year. Now, hearings that could put the case to a close are tentatively scheduled for late June.

Meanwhile, the judge will decide whether or not those bringing the Eighth Amendment suit and a related First Amendment lawsuit will be able to depose state officials, including former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, over how the lethal injection process was written.

FILED UNDER: Courts, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Capital Punishment, Jeremy Fogel, San Quentin State Prison
February 21, 2011 | 9:50 AM | By

Execution Drugs: Allegations emerge that British drugs failed

Emmanuel Hammond

The anti-death penalty group Reprieve is claiming that drugs used to execute three inmates in the United States failed to properly work. These executions all utilized sodium thiopental imported from Dream Pharma, a wholesale drug distributer in London. Sodium thiopental is used by many states to put an inmate to sleep before he or she is killed using a paralyzing drug and a heart-stopping drug. Since it became known that states, including California, were importing the anesthetic, there has been controversy over its quality–particularly since the FDA has declined to get involved and either approve or disapprove the foreign drug. Those advocating for death row inmates have said that if the anesthetic doesn’t work, that an inmate can experience excruciating pain while dying, a possible violation of the Eight Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Now, Reprieve claims that the drug in fact did not adequately put Jeffrey Landrigan of Arizona, and Emmanuel Hammond and Brandon Rhode of Georgia to sleep. According to the UK Daily Mail, the group will launch a legal campaign against the British equivalent of the FDA, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Authority, tomorrow in an attempt to recall the drug. In an effort to verify Reprieve’s claims, the Mail interviewed three witnesses to the execution of Hammond, who raped and murdered Julie Love in 1988:

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Capital Punishment, Corrections, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Capital Punishment, Execution Drugs, Sodium Thiopental
February 10, 2011 | 8:56 AM | By

The conservative case for criminal justice reform

Rina Palta

Protesters at San Quentin. They're message? Not a moral case for prison reform, but a financial one.

The financial crisis has made everyone think about priorities–whether it’s rethinking homeownership, or deciding which state programs to keep and which to cut. The upcoming state budget is full of such compromises, including a $530 million cut to services for the disabled. On Tuesday, outside San Quentin State Prison, groups of disabled citizens picketed outside the prison’s gate to protest the cut. Why were they protesting outside of a prison? Here’s what organizer John Rumsey of Marin Ventures had to say:

“When we go to the governor and legislators and say, ‘Don’t cut us,’ they say, ‘Well, where do you want us to cut? Give us some ideas,’” he said. “Well, we thought about it and we thought prisons would be a good place to start.”

Specifically, Rumsey and his fellow picketers were protesting a proposed expansion to San Quentin’s death row (which is old and overcrowded) that would cost the state about $365 million. Why spend money on the death penalty, he asked, and drop services for the disabled?

Increasingly in this recession, people are looking at our criminal justice policies–and not just capital punishment–in this light: what is the financial cost of our criminal justice system, and in comparison, how well is it working? Interestingly, a whole new movement is cropping up around this question, and it’s really growing in conservative circles. On last night’s Crosscurrents, I sat down with KALW’s Martina Castro to talk about a new movement called “Right on Crime” and how it’s changing the political landscape when it comes to criminal justice reform. (Transcript after the jump.)

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Politics, Capital Punishment, Right on Crime, San Quentin State Prison, Texas
February 8, 2011 | 2:06 PM | By

Judge Fogel tours San Quentin

Rina Palta

Protest over a planned death row expansion outside San Quentin State Prison

As part of an ongoing lawsuit over California’s lethal injection procedure, federal district Judge Jeremy Fogel visited San Quentin State Prison today to examine the prison’s lethal injection facility. Fogel has been presiding over a six-year court battle that put executions on hold in 2007. At issue is whether the lethal injection process, as performed in California, leaves too great a risk that an inmate will experience serious pain while dying.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Capital Punishment, Corrections, Capital Punishment, Execution Drugs, Judge Jeremy Fogel, San Quentin
January 21, 2011 | 2:36 PM | By

Execution drug discontinued as foreign batch arrives in California

CDCR

Lethal injection table at San Quentin State Prison

After unspecified “delays,” a shipment of 514.5 grams of the lethal injection drug sodium thiopental arrived at San Quentin State Prison from England today. Meanwhile, Hospira, the sole US manufacturer of the drug and the only one licensed to make it by the FDA announced that they’re completely discontinuing production of the anesthetic. Recently, following raw materials shortages, the Washington Post reports Hospira decided to move production of sodium thiopental to its factory in Italy:

“Like most other European countries, however, Italy does not have capital punishment and opposes the death penalty. Italy’s Radical Party brought a motion to Parliament, which passed overwhelmingly on Dec. 22, requiring Hospira to ensure that the drug would be used only for medical purposes and would not find its way into prisons.”

Hospira determined that there was no way they could ensure the drug wouldn’t be used in executions, and so decided to completely discontinue the drug. “Hospira has long deplored the drug’s use in executions” the WaPo reports, “but said it regretted having to stop production, because sodium thiopental has legitimate medical purposes as an anesthetic used in hospitals.” The company has continued to manufacture two other lethal injection drugs that are used in California’s three-drug procedure.

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Capital Punishment, Corrections, ACLU, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Capital Punishment, Execution Drugs, Sodium Thiopental
January 6, 2011 | 10:26 AM | By

International supplier of execution drugs doubles as driving school

BBC

According to the BBC, the wholesale pharmaceutical company that sold execution drugs to the state of Arizona is a small, west London shop that also houses a driving school. Andrew Hoskin writes today that Dream Pharma Ltd. was the source of the three drugs (sodium thiopental, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride) used in the execution of Jeffrey Landrigan last year. There has been a nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental since the sole U.S. manufacturer of the drug, Hospira, stopped producing it because the company lacked necessary raw materials. California borrowed sodium thiopental from Arizona, but has not yet used the drugs–and has declined to give the exact source of the state’s own British supply of the drug.

The owner of the pharmacy, Mehdi Alavi, told the BBC he didn’t know the drugs would be used in executions. Clive Stafford Smith, an anti-death-penalty activist in the UK balked at the denial:

Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Capital Punishment, Corrections, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, Capital Punishment, Execution Drugs, Sodium Thiopental
January 5, 2011 | 12:14 PM | By

Condemned inmates are dying; not from execution

Nice graphic from the Sacramento Bee shows an interesting trend at California’s death row: inmates are dying, but not because they’re executed. Thirteen inmates have been executed in California since the death penalty came back in 1977. There are 721 condemned inmates. Additional death row factoids:

  • 64 percent are between the ages of 40-60.
  • 44 percent arrived on death row in the 1990s.
  • 30 percent were sentenced in Los Angeles County.
    FILED UNDER: Capital Punishment, Corrections, Capital Punishment