Death penalty digest

Let’s start with this week’s award for absurd reasoning in a death penalty case. It goes to Nanette K. Laughrey, United States District Court Judge for the Western District of Missouri. She wins because a few days ago she dismissed a challenge to lethal injection procedures in Missouri. Why? Because “Plaintiffs present merely an abstract injury that fails to meet the threshold showing for an injury in fact”. I am sure that it will be of great comfort to the prisoners who launched the challenge that the needle pumping lethal chemicals into their bodies is now considered “abstract” and a “hypothetical risk of injury”

Ohio has been criticised for failing to follow its own rules on when executing prisoners. It has got so bad that the Governor, Republican John Kasich, has delayed all scheduled executions for 30 days. That does not, however, end the problem: as Ohio Supreme Court Justice Paul Pfiefer (who, in an earlier career as a legislator, actually drafted the state’s death penalty law) now recognises. Calling Ohio’s system a “death lottery”, he calls for abolition. Kasich should listen.

In odder news from the US, the New York Times recently published an opinion piece from a professor and a blogger calling for all executions to be televised. The idea comes in the aftermath of a Georgia case where a judge ordered an execution recorded to determine whether Pentobarbital caused undue suffering. Their argument is actually quite interesting – that being more aware of what is done in their name will enable voters to make an informed decision about the death penalty. They have some big names on their side: Albert Camus said that viewing executions turned him against capital punishment, and Helen Prejean (whose spiritual guidance to death row inmates was dramatised in the critically acclaimed film Dead Man Walking) has said that broadcasting executions would lead to abolition. Good idea or cruel voyeurism? Either way, the article is well worth a read.

Outside the US, the main news is that India may be about to execute its first prisoners since 2004. The first to face the gallows may be conspirators who were implicated in the assassination of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1991. They were tried in a closed proceeding, which was accused of accepting forced confessions and lower burdens of proof – an unfair trial.

US Death Watch:

A number of executions were scheduled for August, but almost all have been stayed. The only execution that has so far proceeded is that of Jerry Jackson in Virginia on August 18^th. Jackson was subjected to severe abuse as a child – something the jury that sentenced him did not hear, and Governor Bob McDonnell thought not “compelling”.

Manuel Valle, a Reprieve assisted prisoner who has been waiting on death row for an incredible 33 years, may be executed on September 1^st, when a stay expires. He would be Florida’s first execution with pentobarbital, a drug which has led to botched executions at least twice and whose manufacturer opposes its use in executions.