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Georgia poised to have first post-Baze lethal injection execution

By Douglas A. Berman

In some future macabre capital punishment version of Trivial Pursuit, the question will surely be asked what state had the first execution after the Supreme Court's lethal injection decision in Baze.  Though Texas might make for the best guess to most of the state questions in the capital punishment version of Trivial Pursuit, this AP story highlights that Georgia may be first out of the box (or should I say the first to put someone in a box) after Baze. Of course, capital punishment trivia fans know that Utah was the first state to go forward with an execution after the last major SCOTUS-created moratorium in the 1970s.  But can anyone name (without looking this up at DPIC) the four other states that had executions before Texas in the late 1970s and early 1980s?  (Interestingly, Texas was the first state to conduct a lethal injection execution, but three electrocutions and a gassing took place after Utah used a firing squad to execute Gary Gilmore in January 1977 and before Texas executed Charlie Brooks through lethal injection in December 1982...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sentencing Law and Policy on May 06, 2008 (boomark / email).