The StandDown Texas Project

Double Jeopardy

That's the title of an article in the November 17 issue of the New Yorker, written by Paige Williams.  It's subtitled, "In Alabama, a judge can override a jury that spares a murderer from the death penalty."  Here's a brief excerpt from this must-read:

Most states with the death penalty require a unanimous vote of twelve in order to impose capital punishment. Alabama requires ten. In this case, the jury unanimously rejected the state’s request to send Jackson to the electric chair. The jurors were reluctant to condemn a teen-ager to death, especially in a case with such conflicting evidence. “I had concerns about whether Shonelle Jackson was the shooter,” a juror named Jan Burkes later said, in a sworn deposition, adding, “Other jurors also had concerns about whether Mr. Jackson was responsible.”

Judge Gordon thanked the jurors and sent them home.

In Alabama, though, a capital case doesn’t necessarily end there. The state’s judges can exercise an unusual power: they can “override” a jury’s collective judgment and impose the death penalty unilaterally.

Earlier coverage of Alabama's practice of judicial override begins at the link.

Just Mercy

Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption is by Bryan Stevenson, and it's getting a lot of attention.  He's the founding director of the Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative. 

A multi-city book tour kicks off next week at Washington, DC's legendary Politics & Prose.  You can order a signed book, and they will be happy to mail it to you after the event.

The New York Times OpEd columnist Nicholas Kristof writes, "When Whites Just Don’t Get It, Part 3."  Here's the beginning of this must-read:

SOME white Americans may be surprised to hear Archbishop Desmond Tutu describe Bryan Stevenson, an African-American lawyer fighting for racial justice, as “America’s young Nelson Mandela.”

Huh? Why do we need a Mandela over here? We’ve made so much progress on race over 50 years! And who is this guy Stevenson, anyway?

Yet Archbishop Tutu is right. Even after remarkable gains in civil rights, including the election of a black president, the United States remains a profoundly unequal society — and nowhere is justice more elusive than in our justice system.

When I was born in 1959, the hospital in which I arrived had separate floors for black babies and white babies, and it was then illegal for blacks and whites to marry in many states. So progress has been enormous, and America today is nothing like the apartheid South Africa that imprisoned Mandela. But there’s also a risk that that progress distracts us from the profound and persistent inequality that remains.

 Vanity Fair also takes note of the book.  It leads the montly Hot Type column in the November issue.

America the complicated. Defense lawyers down South are too often compared to Atticus Finch, but Bryan Stevenson, whose Just Mercy (Spiegel & Grau) chronicles his crusades for the rights of the oppressed and unjustly incarcerated, proves he's deserving.

The Huntsville Times reports, "Can American courts be color, income-blind?"  It's by Kay Campbell.  He'll be in Huntsville, Alabama on Sunday, November 2.

Stevenson has been recognized internationally for his work to point out biases in the American criminal justice system that result in incarceration rates that rise or fall in a reverse relationship to the income of the accused.

"We have a system of justice in this country that treats you much better if you're rich and guilty than if you're poor and innocent," Stevenson said during his TED Talk in March 2012. "Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes."

And it's the disconnect between what is reality for so many in impoverished neighborhoods and the reality of Americans with adequate income, influence and sense of confidence that has resulted in a sense, for most Americans, that "these are problems that are not our problems," Stevenson said.

Just Mercy is also one of five nonfiction finalists for the Kirkus Reviews Book Awards.

Related posts are in the books category index.  Here's the link to his 2012 TED Talk.

New Lethal Injection Challege Filed in Alabama

The federal court filing in Price v. Thomas is available in Adobe .pdf format.

"Death row inmate sues to stop new execution protocol," is by Brian Lyman of the Montgomery Advertiser.

An Alabama death row inmate wants a federal court to declare the state's new execution protocol cruel and unusual punishment.

In a lawsuit filed in the U.S. Southern District for Alabama Wednesday, Christopher Lee Price, sentenced to death for the brutal 1991 murder of Bill Lynn, a Tuscaloosa minister, argues that the three-drug protocol adopted by the Alabama Department of Corrections last month would cause excruciating pain and violate the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The Alabama Attorney General's Office had no comment on the lawsuit Thursday.

The state long used sodium thiopental as its anesthetic in execution procedures, but switched to pentobarbital in 2011 after manufacturer Hospira stopped making sodium thiopental in the United States. The state acknowledged it was out of the drug earlier this year.

On September 10, the Alabama Department of Corrections adopted a new execution protocol, revealing it in filings with the Alabama Supreme Court later that week. Under the procedure, the condemned would first be administered 500 milligrams of midazolam hydrochloride, a sedative; 600 milligrams of rocuronium bromide, a paralyzing drug and 240 milligram equivalents of potassium chloride, to stop the heart.

AL.com posts, "Alabama death row inmate says new lethal injection mix would cause cruel and unusual punishment," by Mike Cason.

An Alabama death row inmate has filed a federal lawsuit to block the state's use of a new lethal injection mix.

Christopher Lee Price filed the lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Mobile.

Price's lawyers also filed a motion with the Alabama Supreme Court today asking it to deny the state's request to set his execution date until after his federal lawsuit is resolved.

Price's federal lawsuit says the state wants to use a new three-drug protocol never used on any prisoner in the United States.

"Federal suit seeks to block Alabama execution using new combination of drugs," is AP coverage filed by Phillip Rawls.

Boston attorney Aaron Katz filed the suit Wednesday night in Mobile on behalf of inmate Christopher Lee Price.

The suit asks a federal judge to block the state from using a new, three-drug combination to execute Price.

The state prison system developed the combination after running out of one of the drugs in its old execution protocol. Alabama has not had an execution since 2013 because of the shortage, but state Attorney General Luther Strange asked the Alabama Supreme Court last month to set execution dates for Price and eight other inmates using the new drug combination.

Earlier coverage of Alabama lethal injection issues begins at the link.

LI Editorials - Alabama & Ohio

"How Alabama executes," is the Anniston Star editorial.

If the state of Alabama is going to execute condemned prisoners, it must be upfront and transparent about the process. Today, that’s not happening.

Until that changes, Alabama and its embattled Department of Corrections carries the stench of a government that wishes the public didn’t have a right to know how it plans to kill those on death row.

On Tuesday, Star reporter Tim Lockette outlined the situation of inmate Thomas Arthur, 73, who has been on death row since 1983 for the murder of Troy Wicker of Muscle Shoals. Arthur’s execution has been delayed as Alabama, along with other states that execute prisoners by lethal injection, dealt with a shortage of the necessary drugs.

Stocked with its new three-drug execution cocktail — an anaesthetic, a drug that relaxes the muscles, another drug that stops the heart — Alabama is on the verge of resuming executions. Problem is, the state hasn’t revealed the protocol it will follow when executions begin again at Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore.

Today's Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes the editorial, "Death penalty protocol in Ohio needs light, not darkness."

Draft legislation that would allow providers of lethal injection drugs to remain anonymous and that would indemnify doctors assisting with state executions from censure by their state licensing boards is emanating from Attorney General Mike DeWine's office.

What's next, allowing the execution team to wear masks?

This latest step in Ohio's death penalty dance -- stemming from a series of missteps that have put the state's execution protocol under examination by a federal judge – will push Ohio even further into the dark ages.

Earlier coverage from Alabama and Ohio, at the links.

Additional Alabama Coverage

Today's Anniston Star reports, "Details of Alabama execution procedure still secret," by Tim Lockette.

Lawyers for an inmate on Alabama's death row say the state has kept them in the dark about most of the details of its new protocol for execution by lethal injection.

"The state's new lethal injection protocol has not been examined by any court," attorneys for inmate Thomas Arthur say in a motion filed with the Alabama Supreme Court last week.

And:

Florida's protocol uses a stronger dose of midazolam than the ones prescribed in Ohio or Oklahoma. Alabama's new protocol uses the same dosage as Florida.

Still, it's not clear just how closely the new Alabama protocol follows Florida's. In Florida, executions conducted according to a 10-page set of instructions that outlines how prison staff will verify an inmate's death and when an execution process should be halted.

Alabama has declined to release its full protocol.

Earlier coverage of the Alabama lethal injection challenge begins at the link.  Related posts are in the lethal injection category index.

Alabama's New Lethal Injection Drugs Challenged

That's the title of an AP report filed by Kim Chandler, via AL.com.

An attorney for a condemned inmate said Alabama's new lethal injection drug combination needs to be scrutinized by the courts before it is used because it relies on a drug involved in two recently botched executions.

Lawyers for death row inmate Tommy Arthur on Friday filed paperwork with the Alabama Supreme Court opposing the state's request to set an execution date for him.

One of Arthur's lawyers said the state is trying to put Arthur to death before courts have assessed the constitutionality of the new three-drug combination adopted by the Department of Corrections.

"Judicial review of this significantly changed protocol is especially critical because the state of Alabama plans to use as the first drug -- midazolam hydrochloride -- the same drug used in several recently botched executions in other states, including those of Dennis McGuire in Ohio and Joseph Wood in Arizona," attorney Suhana S. Han wrote.

And:

Alabama last executed an inmate in 2013 and has been unable to carry out lethal injections since running out of a drug used under the old protocol.

The Department of Corrections adopted a new lethal injection procedure in September and the attorney general's office moved to seek execution dates for nine inmates who have spent between 16 and 24 years on Alabama's death row.

Earlier coverage from Alabama begins at the link.