Criminal Law

The size of death row, Baze & the continuing decline of the death row phenomnon

Posted on February 18, 2008
The Death Penalty Information Center remains the singularly best place to turn to for the statistical and historical resources on the death penalty. In this post DPIC looks at what appears to be a year to year drop in the total number of people under a death sentence and that despite the staying of all executions since the early fall...

weekly edition not going out this week

Posted on February 18, 2008
Got too caught up in prepping a case for President’s Day & failed to leave enough time to prep the weekly email edition.  I’m hoping to have a skeletal copy online here by earlier (read 1 a.m.) Wednesday morning,  my apologies for any inconvenience.

weekly might go out President’s Day

Posted on February 17, 2008
An unusually large number of opinions to wade through (lotsa losses) &  a tight schedule means the weekly email edition is likely to go out Monday.  Any wins not previously noted (and I don’t think there are any) will be posted Sunday afternoon...

another perspective on Harlow

Posted on February 16, 2008
As noted in the post concerning the grant of relief in Harlow, the Wyoming Public Defender got roughed up quite a bit in the opinion. From Woman in Black, a PD in Wyoming, a close up view: If anyone cares enough to look up anything about the Harlow case, one will see that the decision bashes (big time) on the Wyo...

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Wyoming’s death row down to just one

Posted on February 16, 2008
On Friday the federal district court in Wyoming threw out James Harlow’s death sentence for the murder of Cpl. Wayne Martinez at the state penitentiary in Rawlins. [Opinion is in three parts, here, here & here / zip] In the 232-page ruling, habeas relief was granted as: Conflicts between Harlow’s trial attorney, Keith Goody, and former state Public Defender Sylvia Hackl, including Goody being in the unenviable position of being forced to chose between his job & his client & all but being told mid-trial he was going to be fired for too aggressively representing his client; The Wyoming Public Defender’s Office failure to provide enough money for an adequate investigation into circumstances related to the case including only paying just $15 /hour for investigatory costs; The withholding of exculpatory evidence relating to the state’s witnesses; and Trial court’s refusal to allow Harlow’s attorney to adequately death & life qualify the jury...

Free CLE online?

Posted on February 16, 2008
Mentor CLE offers free online video CLE courses on a number of topics, some tailored specifically to Illinois lawyers, some not. [h/tThe Illinois Trial Practice Weblog]

The weekend snark

Posted on February 16, 2008
A hilariously snarky piece from Dahlia Lithwick in Slate, Letter from a young, hip, cynical former Obamamaniac (h/t InstaPundit).

Wow what a Friday

Posted on February 15, 2008
WOWSER what a Friday. Johnny Paul Penry pleads to life. Harris County’s notorious DA Chuck Rosenthal quit amid scandal. The Innocence Project gets two men freed — one who had been on death row for 15 years. The first aggravated murder of an unborn child ever to proceed to a capital sentencing / penalty phase...

Life: what a beautiful choice Johnny Paul Penry

Posted on February 15, 2008
Johnny Paul Penry has pleaded to life. Details are trickling in. Congratulations to John Wright, who has been Johnny’s defense lawyer since the first trial in 1980, and Mr. Wright’s co-counsel Frank Blazek, Julia Tarver Mason, David Lane, and Danalynn Recer...

Chuck Rosenthal out

Posted on February 15, 2008
Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal has resigned in the wake of a scandal involving romantic and racist e-mails found on his county computer.  StandDown has more.

The Innocence Project performs a miracle in Mississippi

Posted on February 15, 2008
From the Innocence Project Two Mississippi men are cleared after 15 years At hearings this morning in a packed Mississippi courthouse, two Innocence Project clients convicted of separate child murders in the same small town were cleared based on new evidence proving their innocence...

First capital sentencing for aggravated murder of an unborn child?

Posted on February 15, 2008
In Ohio, a jury Friday morning found Bobby Cutts Jr. guilty of killing his pregnant lover and their unborn baby. In a strange twist, the jury did not convict Cutts in the aggravated “death eligible” murder of Jessie Davis, but rather the lesser included crime of murder...

pre-weekend roundup

Posted on February 15, 2008
[updated] In the news, both capital & criminal just reform, from both in the States and abroad: The Innocence Project reports “Lynn DeJac spent 13 years in a New York prison for her alleged involvement in the death of her teenage daughter in 1993...

After abolition: New Jersey

Posted on February 15, 2008
Newark, New Jersey’s largest city,  has had only three homicides this year and none in the last thirty-two days, the longest such streak since the ‘67 riots. Since the beginning of the year, Newark has had just three homicides, and it has been 32 days since the last one...

Fifth Circuit grants relief

Posted on February 15, 2008
The Fifth Circuit granted relief on Thursday in Robert Tassin, Jr. v. Cain, No. 07-70013. The panel granted relief, in this facts driven opinion, in light of Giglio, Napue, and Bagley. From the central holding in that opinion Georgina?s attorney testified after trial that he believed, prior to trial, that Georgina would get a ten-year sentence if she testified consistently with her prior statements inculpating Robert and he relayed this belief to her, although emphasizing that nothing was guaranteed...

St. Valentine’s Day

Posted on February 14, 2008
In Rome in C.E. 270, Valentine enraged the emperor Claudius II,* who had issued an edict forbidding marriage. Claudius felt that married men made poor soldiers, because they would not want to leave their families for battle. The empire needed soldiers, so Claudius abolished marriage...

new scholarship

Posted on February 14, 2008
From SSRN a new law review entitled Physician and Execution ? Highlights from a Discussion of Lethal Injection. From the abstract: This article constitutes excerpts of a videotaped discussion (www.nejm.org) hosted by the New England Journal of Medicine on January 14, 2008, concerning a range of topics on lethal injection prompted by the United States Supreme Court’s January 7 oral arguments in Baze v...

Gitmo update

Posted on February 14, 2008
Seton Hall Law’s Mark Denbeaux has released an earth shattering report on Gitmo interrogations. This will be reverberating through at least the spring. It appears the feds made tapes of all of the interrogations they have conducted, including several that appear to cross the line under US treaty obligations...

Lotsa losses

Posted on February 14, 2008
Five published losses were had on Wednesday and Thursday in Florida & Texas. In Lucero v. State, No. 75,247 (TCCA 2/13/2008), the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed on: claimed jury misconduct (use of external evidence / Bible reading during deliberations); a bad jury instruction on mitigation; evidentiary rulings based on witness testimony; improper penalty phase closings & constitutionality of the Texas Statute...

The Florida budget ax

Posted on February 14, 2008
Interesting times appear afoot in Florida.   The Orlando Sentinel in a piece entitled Cuts would stymie justice system, state attorneys say looks at how the budget ax is cutting in to prosecutions: Florida state attorneys are merging jobs, encouraging retirement, freezing positions and contemplating four-day workweeks as they struggle with demands from Tallahassee to slash millions of dollars from their budgets...

Scholarship roundup

Posted on February 13, 2008
This is the first of several posts today on new (or relatively new) scholarship.  The following are a list of article recently published.  The links below show merely the first page of the article as a PDF.  I should note that I have not yet had an opportunity to read any of the articles...

Additional scholarship from SSRN

Posted on February 13, 2008
As noted above, additional scholarship can be found “after the jump.”  With limited exceptions I have not had the opportunity to read what follows and have erred on the side of over-inclusion.  These articles on SSRN and are believed likely to be published later this year.

Happy blawgiversary

Posted on February 13, 2008
This week both Anne Reed’s Deliberation and Scott H. Greenfield’s Simple Justice turned one year old.  One thing that has always bothered me about Scott’s blog’s name is that — save for clients’ who are factually innocent (and we’ve all represented too many of them) or overcharged (ditto)  — for many, if not most, of my clients justice is the last thing they want, they want to go home and/or stay home.

email edition now available

Posted on February 11, 2008
This week’s email edition is now available in html & pdf.  From the introduction: Several wins are noted this week. Leading of is the Florida Supreme Court’s grant of penalty phase relief in Ryan Thomas Green v. State. The trial court in Green found just two aggravators “avoid arrest” and “contemporaneously convicted of another violent felony” aggravators...

Ray Krone’s op-ed in Monday’s Arizona Republic

Posted on February 11, 2008
My fellow Pennsylvania native Ray Krone’s had an OpEd entitled “High court should rethink executions, not just means” Monday in the Arizona Republic. The U.S. Supreme Court is weighing arguments heard recently in Baze vs. Rees, which challenges the constitutionality of execution by lethal injection...

The Fourth Circuit rules in Green v. Johnson

Posted on February 11, 2008
It’s the Fourth Circuit, need I say more? In a case from Virginia, Green v. Johnson, the Fourth Circuit denies relief on a mental retardation claim (his IQ scores & adaptive deficits would let him live in about half of the jurisdictions tracked here)...

FEDS TO SEEK DEATH AT GUANTANAMO MILITARY COMMISSION TRIALS AGAINST SIX

Posted on February 10, 2008
[UPDATE] Sources familiar with the military commission cases indicate that the Pentagon is seeking death in the six cases mentioned earlier this weekend. All six “detainees” are claimed to have had a hand, in one way or another with 9/11 attacks or other potential war crimes...

Where the candidates stand on capital punishment & crime

Posted on February 10, 2008
The San Francisco Chronicle offers this article on the issue of crime, capital punishment & the candidates. The article is a good primer, but not the final word.  My crib sheet on these issues would be (from best to worst) Paul, Obama, Huckabee, Clinton, & lastly, McCain...

news from around the web

Posted on February 09, 2008
A slow news week ends with a flurry of articles. Nebraska legislators appear to be in no hurry to “fix” its death penalty scheme following the striking down of its sole method of execution. Nebraska now enters that twilight zone of having the death penalty n paper but no effective way of implementing it...

RIP Gregory H. Clark

Posted on February 08, 2008
Gregory Clark was gunned down earlier this week while shoveling snow. Clark served for years as an indigent defender often getting the toughest & roughest of cases. From the local press Clark, a well-known defense lawyer, was killed Wednesday afternoon, shot in the back several times by a gunman who ambushed him as he cleared snow from a sidewalk at his home...

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