Fogbow

Foggy wrote: ↑Thu Aug 25, 2022 8:31 am What Maybenaut said.

McKenzie Edwards @mckeds wrote: A Texas jail volunteered to let Comedy Central comedian Jeff Ross roast its inmates. It encouraged inmates to participate. Texas then used the footage to sentence my client, Gabriel Hall, to death.

We’re asking #SCOTUS to review the constitutionality of Mr. Hall’s sentence.
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Filings here: https://supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?fi ... -5487.html…

I am honored to be on Mr. Hall’s team alongside the indefatigable Rob Owen and Professors Raoul Schonemann and Thea Posel.

And I’m proud that this case is my first before the Court.

Cathy Russon @cathyrusson wrote: Steven Lorenzo giving his own opening statement. He calls death row "easy time".
He wants the death penalty, the state wants to give him the death penalty, "that's great, that's what I want."

#StevenLorenzo

While the former president has been going on about his dreams of televised mass executions, others have been going in the complete opposite direction and taking a stand against one of the most truly shameful of American institutions.

On Thursday, in a speech at the Mosaic Community Church in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro made a wonderful announcement — that not only would he not allow any executions during his tenure as governor, but that he would work with the Legislature towards establishing a permanent end to the death penalty in the state. While Pennsylvania hasn't actually had an execution for about two decades, there are still more than 100 people sitting on death row in state prisons.

Idaho could pursue executions by firing squad. Here’s how much it would cost

Kevin Fixler
Mon, February 27, 2023 at 8:11 PM GMT+1

The cost of implementing a bill that seeks to make the firing squad Idaho’s backup execution method has more than doubled since it was last reviewed by the state prisons system, according to a spokesperson for the agency.

The Idaho Department of Correction’s initial estimate to build out the venue for such an execution, as an alternative to lethal injection, is $750,000, spokesperson Jeff Ray told the Idaho Statesman. In 2014, when the department last considered the firing squad, costs were expected to reach at least $300,000, which IDOC determined “would take too much time and money” in choosing not to go forward with the plan, Ray said at the time.

Rep. Bruce Skaug, R-Nampa, last week proposed the bill to use a firing squad as the state’s reserve execution method. Idaho previously offered it as an alternative to lethal injection, but removed death by firing squad in 2009 as the controversial method went unused.

Skaug, a former Ada County deputy prosecutor, last year indicated lawmakers would bring forth the legislation if execution drugs continued to elude the state. The House committee that Skaug chairs will need to approve the bill before it heads to the House floor for a vote.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/idaho-could- ... 13708.html

Gendron pleaded guilty on state charges of killing 10 people in May 2022.

The Justice Department said Friday in a court filing it will seek the death penalty for Payton Gendron, the then-19-year-old who killed 10 people in a racially motivated shooting at a Tops Supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in May 2022.

"United States believes the circumstances in Counts 11-20 of the Indictment are such that, in the event of a conviction, a sentence of death is justified," the filing said.

Lawyers for Gendron previously said he would consider pleading guilty to the federal charges if the death penalty was taken off the table.

* * *

The Justice Department also cited Gendron's intentional infliction of bodily injury, intentional participation in an act resulting in death and the blatant racism associated with the shooting.

"Payton Gendron expressed bias, hatred, and contempt toward Black persons and his animus toward Black persons played a role," the filing said.

Gendron was motivated by a racist, far-right conspiracy known as replacement theory and he wanted to "inspire others to commit similar attacks," according to a criminal complaint. Markings on the rifle used in the shooting included the phrases "here's your reparations" and "the great replacement," the complaint said.

Garland has pursued two death penalty cases under his tenure -- one against Sayfullo Saipov, who killed eight people with a truck on a Manhattan bike path in October 2017, and the second against Robert Bowers, who killed 11 people in a shooting at Pittsburgh's Tree of Life synagogue in October 2018. A jury decided not to sentence Saipov to death, while Bowers was given the death penalty.

Both of those cases were carried over from the previous administration, however, and Garland instituted a moratorium on the death penalty in July 2021. The moratorium remains in place.

The decision to seek the death penalty follows more than a year of deliberations inside the Justice Department. Garland has been open in previous public appearances about his concerns regarding the death penalty, and President Joe Biden campaigned on formally abolishing it at the federal level. But in the absence of a formal policy instituted by the Biden administration, DOJ officials have debated over a so-called "worst-of-the-worst" threshold for when recommending a death sentence is appropriate in some of the most egregious cases of hate-fueled mass acts of terror.

Alarm as Alabama man to be executed via gas method rejected by veterinarians
Death row prisoner Kenneth Smith, 58, to be killed via nitrogen-gas procedure animal scientists have ruled out for ethical reasons

Ed Pilkington
Thu 18 Jan 2024 13.00 CET

Alabama is preparing to execute a death row inmate using nitrogen gas, an experimental method that veterinarians in the US and across Europe have deemed unacceptable as a form of euthanasia for most animals.

Barring last-minute appeals, Kenneth Smith, 58, is scheduled to be judicially killed on 25 January using a previously untested technique. Alabama’s department of corrections is proposing to strap him to a gurney, apply a respirator mask to his face, then force him to breathe pure nitrogen which would cause oxygen deprivation and death.

The method has not been subjected to scrutiny for humans other than reports of workplace accidents in which people became unintentionally trapped in a nitrogen-rich environment and died. Veterinary scientists, however, have carried out laboratory studies on animals and have largely ruled it out for ethical reasons.

Guidelines produced by veterinary authorities in the US and Europe advise that nitrogen hypoxia, as the method is known, is unacceptable for the euthanasia of most mammals other than pigs. Larger mammals, the recommendations say, should be sedated to render them unconscious before the gas is applied.

Alabama’s protocol does not include an initial sedative.

Last week, a federal judge gave the green light for Smith’s execution to go ahead using nitrogen gas. Austin Huffaker, from US district court in Alabama, said he had been unpersuaded by the prisoner’s claim that the untested procedure posed him an “intolerable risk of harm”.

International pressure is mounting, however. On Tuesday, the UN high commissioner for human rights in Geneva expressed alarm that Smith’s proposed execution, which it described as “suffocation by nitrogen gas”, could amount to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment banned under international law.

The UN body noted that the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) “recommends giving even large animals a sedative when being euthanized in this manner, while Alabama’s protocol for execution by nitrogen asphyxiation makes no provision for sedation of human beings prior to execution”.




https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/202 ... -execution

The justices will hear an unusual case in which the state attorney general has agreed that inmate Richard Glossip’s conviction should be thrown out.

The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear an Oklahoma death row inmate's claim that his conviction is legally unsound in a rare case in which the state's attorney general has conceded that key testimony at trial was problematic.

Richard Glossip, now 60, was convicted of arranging for the murder in 1997 of his boss at the Oklahoma City motel where they worked.

* * *

Although Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, has backed Glossip’s appeal, the state has stopped short of agreeing with Glossip’s claim that he is innocent. Even if the conviction is thrown out, Glossip could be put on trial again.

* * *

The state, Drummond said in court papers, “concluded, based on careful review of new information that recently came to light relating to prosecutorial misconduct at Glossip’s trial and cumulative error, that Glossip’s conviction and capital sentence cannot stand.”

In May last year, the Supreme Court stepped in to prevent Glossip's execution going ahead.

* * *

The order also noted that Justice Neil Gorsuch will not participate in the case. The court did not give a reason, but it likely relates to his previous role as a judge on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Oklahoma. If the court is divided 4-4, as is possible, then the state court ruling against Glossip would remain in place.

* * *

Glossip’s lawyers have focused on concerns about key testimony in the case provided by Justin Sneed, who carried out the 1997 murder. Sneed testified that Glossip had hired him to kill motel owner Barry Van Treese.

But it has emerged that prosecutors had withheld information about Sneed and that he had given false testimony at trial.

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to halt the execution of Alabama death row inmate Kenneth Smith, who is scheduled to be put to death this week using nitrogen gas – a wholly new method some experts have decried as veiled in secrecy amid concerns it could lead to excessive pain or even torture.

Smith is due to be executed during a 30-hour window starting Thursday for his part in a 1988 murder for hire. The state 14 months ago aborted an effort to execute him by lethal injection because officials could not set an intravenous line before the execution warrant expired.

Smith and his attorneys last week asked the Supreme Court to pause the execution so they could argue trying to execute Smith a second time would amount to cruel and unusual punishment, violating the Eighth and 14th amendments.

On Wednesday, the justices declined Smith’s requests. They did not provide an explanation in their brief order, and there were no noted dissents.

The US Supreme Court on Wednesday declined to halt the execution of Alabama death row inmate Kenneth Smith, who is scheduled to be put to death this week using nitrogen gas – a wholly new method some experts have decried as veiled in secrecy amid concerns it could lead to excessive pain or even torture.

* * *

On Wednesday, the justices declined Smith’s requests. They did not provide an explanation in their brief order, and there were no noted dissents.

neonzx wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 8:38 pm Death by suffocation.

Alabama has carried out the first execution of a death row inmate in the US using nitrogen gas, an untested procedure which the prisoner’s lawyers had argued amounted to a form of cruel and unusual punishment banned under the US constitution.

Kenneth Smith, 58, was pronounced dead at 8.25pm on Thursday evening at an Alabama prison after breathing pure nitrogen gas through a face mask to cause oxygen deprivation.

The execution had been scheduled to begin at 6pm local time at the Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore, Alabama, but it was delayed as the US supreme court weighed his final appeal. Shortly before 8pm, the court denied that appeal, allowing the execution to proceed.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who along with two other liberal justices dissented, wrote: “Having failed to kill Smith on its first attempt, Alabama has selected him as its ‘guinea pig’ to test a method of execution never attempted before. The world is watching.”

Sam the Centipede wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 10:41 am Also carbon monoxide, which makes operating heaters or cookers burning hydrocarbons potentially dangerous in enclosed spaces.

I guess a less cruel method of execution might have been to pump carbon monoxide into the cell while the victim slept, so his blood gradually lost the ability to transport oxygen (CO blocks haemoglobin more effectively than O₂), and he simply never wakes up.

But that avoids the cruelty and horrific theatre which appear to be obligatory for American executions.

Volkonski wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 11:34 am Pumping nitrogen into the cell would accomplish the same thing.

AndyinPA wrote: ↑Fri Jan 26, 2024 2:00 pm Veterinarians do not consider it a good method for euthanasia.