"Rare execution stay shows Supreme Court concern on death penalty," is by Michael Doyle of the McClatchy Washington Bureau. It's also available from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Here's the beginning of this excellent analysis:
The Supreme Court seemed to share some other people’s second thoughts when it stopped the planned execution this week of a Missouri death row inmate.
By granting a last-ditch plea Wednesday night, justices at a minimum provided Russell Bucklew with another opportunity to argue against lethal injection. His case may be a peculiar one unique to his medical condition.
More broadly, though, the high court’s unusual decision marked one of the few times that justices have stayed an execution, and it hinted at the possibility that the court is joining others in intensifying scrutiny of the death penalty.
“We want the states to get it right,” Richard C. Dieter, the executive director of the nonprofit Death Penalty Information Center, said Thursday, “and now the states have a bit more of a burden to show they’re getting it right, given what’s happened in some cases.”
Earlier coverage from Missouri begins at the link.
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