Eighth Amendment

Though 2017 had the second fewest annual prison executions in several decades—23 executions to be exact—the controversies surrounding capital punishment have yet to decline, reports Newsweek.

In the five death penalty cases Newsweek featured, issues of mental health, overlooked or incorrect use of evidence and neglect of inmates’ rights were brought to the forefront. Similarly, since all of the inmates were executed by lethal injection, disputes over the use of a new drug in the cocktails were also featured.

Firing squad

Ricky Jovan Gray was on Death Row for 10 years for brutally murdering seven people on a six-day killing spree in 2006. His lawyer requested he be killed by firing squad as lethal injection was essentially “chemical torture.”

The judge denied the argument on the grounds that Gray’s lawyers were given the option of the electric chair and also failed to prove the drugs in the cocktail would cause Gray unnecessary suffering.

With 343 homicides in 2017, Baltimore “had the highest murder rate in its history, and by far the highest among the nation’s 30 largest cities,” according to The New York Times 1-17-18

Ledell Lee was on Death Row for 21 years for murdering and sexually assaulting 26-year-old Debra Reese in 1993. Lee’s first lawyer had been drunk during court proceedings, negatively impacting his case.

DNA

After receiving new lawyers, Lee’s legal team requested DNA testing of hair samples that were used as exculpatory evidence. The request was denied despite the fact that the sample used to put Lee behind bars had been discredited by the FBI and the Department of Justice.

Mark James Asay was on Death Row for 18 years as the first White man in Florida to be put on death row for killing a Black man. He also was convicted for killing a White and Hispanic man who was dressed as a woman.

Asay was Florida’s first prisoner to be executed with a cocktail containing the drug etomide. His lawyers argued before the court that the drug cocktail was unconstitutional due to the pain it can cause.

Further complicating his case, Asay also faced ineffective assistance of counsel when his lawyer was placed under investigation for missing critical deadlines for appeals and for storing Asay’s records in a shed, where they were destroyed by water and vermin.

As 2017 progressed, lawyers continued to argue the use of lethal injection as cruel and unusual punishment under the Constitution’s Eighth Amendment to little avail. Some witnessed what onlookers called botched executions.

Overview of inmate deaths in 2017 in CDCR

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A well-known criminal lawyer wants the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the death penalty case of Abel Daniel Hidalgo because he says it could wipe out capital punishment in America.

“I have spent the last few years with my team looking for cases that highlight the gross problems with the death penalty in practice, and this case is a perfect example of them,” attorney Neal Katyal told BuzzFeed News.

He was also the lead attorney for Hawaii’s challenge to Pres. Donald Trump’s travel ban.

Four justices have been waiting for an opportunity to hear a case of this magnitude, the brief states.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Anthony Kennedy have expressed various concerns about the Supreme Court’s handling of death penalty cases.

Hidalgo, an Arizona inmate, has been arguing for the past three years that “The death penalty law is unconstitutional because it doesn’t do enough to narrow who is eligible for the death penalty among those convicted of murder,” the brief maintains.

Katyal’s petition wants the justices to hear Hidalgo’s case and “strike down Arizona’s death penalty law.”

Even though each justice has their own opinion about death penalty laws, Katyal, joined by several other prominent attorneys, contends “the time is now,” to argue his case before the court.

Katyal cited constraints the justices used in their 1976 historical landmark ruling with Gregg v. Georgia. “The evidence is in. The long experiment launched by Gregg in whether the death penalty can be administered within constitutional bounds has failed; it has failed both in Arizona in particular and in the nation more broadly.”

At the time, the Gregg court found that new state death penalty laws were constitutional because they required the finding of aggravating circumstances. The court’s controlling opinion limited who was eligible for execution “so as to minimize the risk of wholly arbitrary and capricious action.”

Today’s Arizona’s death penalty law is such that there are so many aggravating circumstances that “every first-degree murder case filed in Maricopa County in 2010 and 2011 had at least one aggravating factor,” making the person eligible for the death penalty, reported BuzzFeed.

The state’s death penalty scheme has utterly failed “to genuinely narrow the class of persons eligible for the death penalty” as the court has required over the time since Gregg, Katyal maintained.

“A national consensus has emerged that the death penalty is an unacceptable punishment in any circumstances,” according to Katyal’s petition, “The court should take the case and rule that the death penalty, nationwide, is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment’s guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment.”

Katyal’s petition focuses on three key arguments. “First, states can’t give guidance to ensure that only the worst offenders are sentenced to death. Second, states can’t enforce the death penalty without ensnaring and putting to death the innocent. And finally, the present reality of capital punishment — decades spent on Death Row with the remote but very real possibility of execution — is its own possible constitutional violation.”

In its historical 1976 decision, “The court acknowledged that it might someday revisit the constitutionality of the death penalty in light of more convincing evidence.”

https://sanquentinnews.com/republicans-aim-end-americas-death-penalty/

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Death penalty appeal to eliminate capital punishment