There is news involving two federal death penalty cases.
AP reports, "Condemned federal inmate says he won't seek clemency, wants to set execution date." It's by Brett Barrouquere, via the Daily Journal.
A federal inmate on death row for killing a South Carolina woman after escaping from a Kentucky jail wants to bypass any attempt to save his own life and accept an execution date once it is set.
Chadrick Evan Fulks, 36, said he wants to free his lawyers to work for inmates "that do have a chance" of winning a reprieve or an appeal and not spend time and energy on him.
"I feel like I'm just a case # to them and they now have more important cases to work on now that I don't have a chance," Fulks wrote in an email to The Associated Press. "So, why continue on?"
And:
Attempts to reach Amy Donnella, the federal public defender handling Fulks' case, were unsuccessful over several weeks. Fulks appeals have each been turned away in the courts, with the U.S. Supreme Court rejecting a last bid from him Dec. 4.
Federal executions are on hold while the Justice Department writes new regulations for carrying out lethal injections in response to lawsuits brought by several inmates. The last federal execution took place in 2003, when Louis Jones was put to death by lethal injection for a kidnapping resulting in a death.
Bureau of Prisons spokeswoman Traci Billingsley declined to discuss Fulks or his case, but said the process of rewriting the execution protocol is being finalized.
Death row inmates who waive their appeals are referred to as volunteers.
In Massachusetts, the Boston Globe reports, "Gary Lee Sampson defense budget ordered," by Travis Andersen.
A federal judge in Boston has ordered lawyers for serial killer Gary Lee Sampson to file a budget proposal to prepare for his sentencing retrial, where he may again face a death penalty.
“The budget should include ‘the best preliminary estimate that can be made of the cost of all services [counsel, expert, investigative, and other]’ to prepare this case for retrial concerning sentencing, and may include particular amounts for discrete phases of preparation,” US District Court Judge Mark L. Wolf wrote in an order issued on Friday.
Wolf gave Sampson’s attorneys until noon on Jan. 9 to file a budget request for their work, which will be publicly funded. A lawyer for Sampson could not be reached for comment on the order, and defense attorneys had not filed a response as of Sunday evening.
The average cost of defending a federal capital trial is $620,932, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a research organization based in Washington, D.C.
Related posts are in the federal death penalty category index.
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