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Capital Defense Weekly 
Covering Capital Defense
Post Frequency: 17.8/day Last Entry: March 28, 2011 at 23:29:51 Recent Entries: 1052
By Karl R. Keys, Esq.
Go to Capital Defense Weekly, find other Criminal Law blogs, or browse all law blogs.
From around the web: Jamie Spencer
Posted on March 01, 2008From around the web: Jamie Spencer has a fairly thoughtful piece entitled The Threat of the Death Penalty: Efficiency vs. Accuracy in response to Grits for Breakfast posts entitled ?Would you confess to a crime you didn?t commit to save your life?? Jamie’s article is especially thought provoking as wrestles with one of the major theoretical issues underpinning capital appellate & postconviction review, how quick of a process is too quick...
alt.spring.break
Posted on March 01, 2008Death penalty alt- spring break is now a little over a week away. This year it is is Austin, 10-14. Alternative Spring Breaks are designed to give college and high school students something more meaningful to do during their week off, rather than just spending time at the beach or sitting at home catching up on school work...
New video from California’s death penalty commission on victims
Posted on February 29, 2008http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-o_HWgatFM A round will follow on Saturday
A question for Senator Obama
Posted on February 28, 2008For those who haven’t had a chance yet to vote in the presidential primaries or caucuses, a suggestion from Jamie Spencer on a question for Illinois’s junior senator: The Austin Obama ?08 campaign called me tonight to tell me they had moved tomorrow?s Town Hall Meeting to a bigger room in the Austin Convention Center, and, more importantly, that they had 2 tickets for me...
Florida’s death row now has no women
Posted on February 28, 2008The Florida Supreme Court granted penalty phase relief in State v. Virginia Larzelere. Larzelere’s conviction for the murder plot that killed her husband, however, was affirmed. The unanimous court found that trial counsel rendered ineffective assistance by failing to introduce mitigating evidence about her mental health, sexual abuse as a child and physical abuse in a previous marriage...
McCleskey + 20
Posted on February 28, 2008Connecticut death row inmates? racial and geographical disparity challenge to the death penalty survived a trial court level motion to dismiss. The opinion is here. To my knowledge it is only the third such challenge to get this far in the last decade or so (Ky & NJ being the other two)...
Another reason to thank Doug Berman
Posted on February 28, 2008The Pew Research Center reports that one in 100 adults in the U.S. is serving time in prison or jail right now. Those numbers breakdown to about: 1 in 36 Hispanic adults, 1 in 15 African-American adults, & 1 in 9 African-Americans between 20 & 34 are behind bars...
Pigs fly in the Fifth Circuit
Posted on February 27, 2008The Fifth Circuit today granted relief in Charles Mine v. Quarterman as the Texas special issues sentencing scheme precluded the jury from giving effect to Mines?s mitigating evidence of mental illness in light of Penry and its progeny. The unpublished order effectively means that Mine will have to be resentenced...
a fascinating decision from the Sixth Circuit
Posted on February 27, 2008Michael Bies sits on Ohio’s death row. Prior to the Supreme Court’s decision in Atkins v. Virginia theOhio courts determined that he was meentally retarded. At the time of the determination of mental retardation determination both state and federal precedent permitted the execution of the mentally retarded...
Nichols update
Posted on February 27, 2008Two of my favorite rags blogs, StandDown & Of Counsel, have updates on the Nichols trial in Georgia & a fascinating order that has surfaced that some say has effectively bankrupted that state’s capital defense bar.
federal death penalty update
Posted on February 27, 2008Our friends over at the FDPRC note several new life verdicts in teh federal system, including a stunner out of East Texas: United States v. Mosher (EDTx), February 27, 2008 In a prison-killing case in Beaumont, TX, in the sixth day of deliberations, the jury has reported a deadlock in the selection portion of the penalty phase and the court has imposed life...
Deterrence v. Retribution: Newark, NJ
Posted on February 26, 2008Newark New Jersey, less than 90 days after abolition of the death penalty in that state, has experienced the longest period without a homicide, apparently, since Eisenhower. I am curious to here the criminologist weigh in on this one.
WOWSERS - SIX capital GVR’s today from the Supreme Court
Posted on February 25, 2008Today’s order list from the United States Supreme Court had six GVRs (Grant, Vacate, & Remand) in light of Danforth v. Minnesota. As Robert Bacon predicted a few weeks ago, five of those cases are from Idaho (Paul Rhoades, Randy McKinney, Gerald Pizzuto) David Card & James Harriston...
Hearsay
Posted on February 25, 2008http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xi5LESZ7_Kc thanks to David Feige for the link.
finally, the email edition is available
Posted on February 25, 2008This week’s email edition is available, warning in advance, it is beefy. Several wins are noted this edition. With names as American as Pepin, Tassin, Cole/Abdul-KabirMoreno, Mata, Kerr, Harper, Ramirez, & Harlow the “wins” this edition run the gamut from pretrial evidentiary rulings to methods of execution to plain old fashion jury instruction error prosecutorial suppression of favorable evidence to just plain bad lawyering...
A small miracle in Georgia for the indigents’ defense bar
Posted on February 25, 2008Sherri Jefferson, whose story we brought to you last fall, won near miraculously in the Georgia Supreme Court today. In the world of turmoil that has enveloped the Georgia indigents’ defense bar in recent month this is somewhere between good & great news...
Gitmo chief gone
Posted on February 25, 2008mcjoan @ DailyKos notes: Last week The Nation published a damning account from Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo’s military commissions: When asked if he thought the men at Guantánamo could receive a fair trial, Davis provided the following account of an August 2005 meeting he had with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes–the man who now oversees the tribunal process for the Defense Department...
the Moussaoui trial and the right to counsel
Posted on February 25, 2008Adam Liptak looks at the Moussaoui trial and the right to counsel issues that are likely to take this case straight to the next edition of caselaw books: [It] turns out that Mr. Moussaoui has two powerful and quite fundamental objections to how his case was handled, both involving the right to counsel guaranteed by the Constitution...
Sunday brunch wrap-up
Posted on February 24, 2008A few pieces making news & stories I wished time permitted me to cover: The Los Angeles Daily Journal notes that the “[s]tate budget woes have put the brakes on the California Supreme Court’s proposal to reform the death-penalty appeal;” The San Jose Mercury News notes the death penalty panel looks at reasons for reversals (this is an evolving story, and I’m trying to find local blogger coverage as I am not in any way familiar with the nuances of the story); Volokh’s Coconspirator David Kopel examines whether there is a “human right” of self-defense; As predicted, the New Hampshire Senate killed expansion of that state’s death penalty 22-2...
writing as fast as we can but…
Posted on February 24, 2008I’m writing as fast as I can, however, eight hours of research & writing this weekend this edition is far from done. A partial draft of the email edition is available Several wins are noted this edition. With names as American as Pepin (the same name as one of the biggest flirts in my senior high school class) Tassin, Cole/Abdul-Kabir, Moreno, Mata, Kerr, Harper, Ramirez, Harlow the “wins” this edition run the gamut from pretrial evidentiary rulings to methods of execution to plain old fashion jury instruction error prosecutorial suppression of favorable evidence to just plain shitty lawyering IAC...
New trial ordered (again) for Michael Mordenti
Posted on February 23, 2008Michael Mordenti wil face trial for the fourth time for the murder of Thelma Royston. Previously sentenced to death on retrial a jury imposed a life sentence. As the Florida Second District Court of Appeals pithily notes The issue in this case is whether the trial court erred in excluding tatements made by the alleged coconspirator, deceased at the time of trial, which, if believed by the jury, would exonerate Michael Mordenti...
When forensics “experts” go bad: Mississippi medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne and ?forensic odentologist? Dr. Michael West
Posted on February 21, 2008Radley Balko has repeatedly examined Mississippi medical examiner Dr. Steven Hayne and ?forensic odentologist? Dr. Michael West, never favorably. The pair’s work resulted in numerous wrongful convictions. Now another potential name to add to that list, Jimmie Christian Duncan...
New scholarship
Posted on February 21, 2008Two great new pieces of scholarship are noted: Dead Man Waiting: Death Row Delays, the Eighth Amendment, and What Courts and Legislatures Can Do, by Kate McMahon, 25 Buff. Pub. Int. L.J. 43 (2006-2007) & Note, The Common-Law Rule of Consistency in Modern Capital Sentencing, by John P...
A snapshot on the federal death penalty nationally from a Louisville brief
Posted on February 21, 2008Several federal district court’s around the country have begun to put high profile litigation online. The Western District of Kentucky has put large parts of USA v. Steven Green online. A substantial number of briefs have been recently filed. I found informative the current history of the federal death penalty in a passage from the Motion to Declare the Federal Death Penalty Act Unconstitutional Because it is Arbitrary...
H-U-G-E win on state postconviction procedure
Posted on February 20, 2008This morning the Supreme Court, 7-2, in Danforth v. Minnesota (a noncapital case), ruled that state courts, as opposed to the federal courts, may apply new rules of criminal law and procedure retroactively. The SCOTUSBlog has more. I’ll wrap up coverage later as I am waiting for more voices to weigh in on this before adding my own perspective as my take is slightly different than the SCOTUS blog’s view.
LI litigation four years on
Posted on February 20, 2008Four years ago this week the New Jersey Appellate Division handed down what at the time we called “an interesting decision in In the Matter of the Readoption with Amendments of Death Penalty Regulations holding that the state lethal injection protocol under state administrative law fails as it lacks substantial support in the administrative record developed below and appear to be ‘arbitrary and unreasonable’...
Cook v. Schriro, an object lesson
Posted on February 20, 2008Shaun Martin notes, somewhat cheekily, on Wednesday’s decision by the Ninth Circuit decision in Cook v. Schriro: Given both the facts and the panel — which included Judges Callahan and O’Scannlain — no one’s going to be surprised at the result in the Ninth Circuit...
This week four years ago….
Posted on February 19, 2008Four years ago this week Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in Texas. Over at Executed Today it notes On Feb. 17, 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was strapped to a gurney in a Texas death chamber as he declared his innocence for the last time. Minutes later, he was executed by lethal injection...
Update on the nation’s leading expert on women and the death penalty
Posted on February 19, 2008Two great posts on Victor, Streib, regarded by many as the leading authority on women & the death penalty. As DWNC notes: Victor Streib, a nationally known expert in women and the death penalty, has joined the faculty of Elon University School of Law...
Another Mississippi death row wrongful conviction?
Posted on February 18, 2008Radley Balko over at Hit & Run, Reason magazine’s blog, a post boldly entitled Eddie Lee Howard: Mississippi’s Next Exoneration?. A bold claim, by Balko, his piece and evidence strongly raises questions that Mississippi may have caught teh wrong man yet again.
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My fiance's check is DD into a local credit union. Bank seems to have a pattern of "invisibly holding" charges from the debit card until just HOURS before his DD is processed (and this is after hours, of course). Over th
Have your fiance take the information you've collected and go into the bank...
what are the proper and legal steps to dissolve a partnership in an ongoing farm business?
I would say that the final tax forms are dispersed for that year with the indica...
It is my understanding that the 6th Amendment requires, that if you can't afford a lawyer in a criminal case, the Court must provide a lawyer in your defense at no charge to you. However, in a civil case no such protecti
That is not entirely true, even in the case of criminal cases. The court will pr...
Attorney welt, weinberg & reis co....from pittsburgh are collecting a credit card debt from capital one can they force me to send them a list of my assets for sheriffs sale
No! Only a Judge can make you do that and that is only after you have your day i...
I was called to give a deposition for the defense and the defendant is the person who stole our car, there is a chance that I will be called to satisfy at his trial. How can I get out of this, as my husband is to testify
If you were subpoenaed for the deposition you will need to appear or face prosec...
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