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'Backlog' Death-Penalty Rationale Fatally Flawed

By standdown

That's the title of an OpEd by Catholic University of America Law prof Cara Drinan.  It appeared in Thursday's Atlanta Journal-Constiution.  LINKOn April 16, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal injection. Before the ink on the court's opinion was dry, officials in Virginia, Texas, Florida and Oklahoma set in motion plans to execute inmates whose deaths had been on hold. Three weeks later, Georgia became the first state in the nation to resume use of the death penalty when it executed William Earl Lynd ?- part of what a spokesman for the Georgia attorney general's office called an attempt to clear "the backlog." In light of the recent release and exoneration of death row inmates in North Carolina and Texas, the sense of urgency driving these states is both perplexing and troubling ?- and in the case of Georgia, whose indigent defense system is collapsing, it's downright embarrassing...continue to full post

Full post as published by StandDown Texas Project on May 20, 2008 (boomark / email).