Kelley Shannon writes the Texas AP dispatch, "States' death row injections get OK after high court ruling," via the San Antonio Express-News. Shannon has an excellent roundup of news and quotes from other states in the report.
Many states wasted little time trying to get executions back on track following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholding the use of a three-drug lethal cocktail.
Almost immediately, Virginia lifted its death penalty moratorium. Mississippi and Oklahoma said they would seek execution dates for convicted murderers, and other states were ready to follow.
The ruling Wednesday "should put an end to the de facto moratorium on the death penalty caused by legal challenges to this method of execution," said Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a nonprofit group that supports the death penalty.
The chief prosecutor in Houston, Kenneth Magidson, whose surrounding Harris County sends more inmates to death row than any other, said he would seek execution dates for the six inmates awaiting execution "in due course."
The Dallas Morning News reports, "Supreme Court clears way for lethal injections to resume ," written by Diane Jennings.
But Texas' execution chamber, the busiest in the nation, probably won't open for business again until a similar case, involving Heliberto Chi, who was convicted of killing a store clerk in Arlington, is resolved by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
"It's a procedural hurdle that still has to be cleared," said Edward Wilkinson, assistant chief of the appellate section of the Tarrant County district attorney's office.
Mr. Chi's execution was stayed by the Texas court in October after the Supreme Court had agreed to hear the Kentucky case.
The Court of Criminal Appeals received briefs in the Chi case in January. The Chi case involves not only the drugs used in executions, but also other protocol issues such as training of the person who administers the drugs.
In the Kentucky case, Baze vs. Rees, attorneys argued that the combination of drugs and administration of lethal injections caused the inmate to suffer unnecessarily, violating the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
Texas uses the same drug cocktail in executions, but David Dow, law professor at the University of Houston, said the process in Texas is less transparent than the process in Kentucky, so, "It is possible that lethal injection challenge will get some traction in Texas."
Mr. Dow is assisting in the Chi case.
And:
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins on his struggles with the death penalty:
"I sit here and I see the worst, the worst of what humans can do. And when you sit here and see that, the only logical conclusion that you can come to is we have to seek the ultimate punishment.
"But when you go home, sit with your family in day-to-day chores, you look at morality and religion and think about the course of life. Then you start to question, 'Am I putting myself in that same position as that person [who] for whatever reason decided to take a life?'
"Now, I represent the government and I am in the position to do the same that they do. I struggle with that. As a district attorney, I'm here to uphold the law and protect the society I have been elected to represent. So the question I have for myself is: 'If I don't pursue these crimes that are so heinous with ultimate punishment, am I living up to my ultimate responsibility?'
"But my other side of me is not only to protect society but to make society better. If I do the death penalty, am I doing that?"
John Moritz reports, "High court ruling sets stage for executions to resume in Texas," in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project in New York, said the kind of prosecutorial mistakes his group has uncovered in Dallas County has lead to the release of 16 men who were wrongfully convicted, ample reason to consider placing a death penalty moratorium.
"How many more mistakes do you need to see?" Scheck asked. "I think it is ironic. The Supreme Court has opened the floodgates to more executions."
Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins said that there are innocent people sitting in the state's prisons, raising the possibility that someone who didn't commit a crime has been executed. He agreed with Justice Stevens that the death penalty needs to be revisited.
"I think it raises the issue that we ought to have an honest debate about the death penalty," Watkins said.
The Houston Chronicle reports, "Harris County gets ready to execute 6 killers," written by a team of Chronicle journalists.
Jordan Steiker, a University of Texas law professor who argued a death penalty case before the Supreme Court last year, said the court's ruling doesn't necessarily slam the door on appeals against lethal injection.
"The opinion leaves open the possibility of challenging execution protocols, but it requires increased evidentiary support as well as showing that a clear alternative is available," Steiker said.
Richard Dieter, executive director of the nonprofit Washington, D.C.-based Death Penalty Information Center, said the "narrow" ruling does not settle the question of which execution method states should use.
"The opinion," he said, "doesn't ... even provide the states with a road map to follow."
University of Houston law professor David Dow, an attorney with the Texas Innocence Network, argued that just because the Kentucky death row inmates didn't meet the standard of a "substantial risk or significant harm" doesn't mean Texas inmates can't qualify.
"Kentucky was the worst state for this case," Dow said. "It had executed exactly one inmate by lethal injection."
Texas, which has put more than 400 people to death by lethal injection since 1982, would offer a much bigger sample. "If you could identify 10 cases where there has been some sort of error in implementation, is that a substantial risk? I don't know. That's something the courts in evaluating the protocols in Texas will have to grapple with."
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