In their first capital case opinion of 2010, the Arizona Supreme Court has affirmed the conviction and sentence of Mr. Ryan Kuhs. Read the opinion here.
What’s New
Andrew Love, a California capital defense attorney, has written an op-ed explaining some of the most outrageous problems with AEDPA.
The Death Penalty Information Center has released its year end report for 2009. According to DPIC, 2009 has seen the fewest death sentence since the United States Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976. The report also states that there were 9 death row exonerations in 2009. Read the report here.
Andy Silverman, U of A law professor and President of the Arizona Capital Representation Project’s Board of Directors, recently assisted in the exoneration of an innocent man convicted of rape and murder. Andy’s client was convicted in Washington, D.C. and spent 28 years in the federal prison in Tucson, AZ.
Read the Washington Post article here.
The Death Penalty Information Center recently released Smart on Crime: Reconsidering the Death Penalty in a Time of Economic Crisis. According to the executive summary, Smart on Crime “explores the prospect of saving states hundreds of millions of dollars by ending the death penalty. The report also serves to release a national poll of police chiefs in which they rank the death penalty at the bottom of their priorities for achieving a safer society.”
Read the report here. CNN’s coverage of the report can be found here.
A recent article in the New York Times discusses the 9th Circuit’s grant of an evidentiary hearing in Ms. Milke’s case. The Circuit court ordered the District Court to hold an evidentiary hearing on the question of whether Ms. Milke waived her Miranda rights.
Read the article here.
An Ohio execution team tried for two hours to insert IVs into Romell Broom in order to execute him by lethal injection. Eventually, Gov. Ted Strickland granted a one-week reprieve.
An article by Atul Gawande in the New Yorker asks if housing prisoners in long-term solitary confinement is torture. Defense counsel may find the article useful as support for a Lackey-type claim.
Read the article here.
John Blume has co-authored a new article on the potential implications of the recent Melendez-Diaz opinion.
The United States Supreme Court ordered the United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia to conduct an evidentiary hearing on Troy Davis’ claim of actual innocence.
In a dissent from the order, Justice Scalia, joined by Justice Thomas, writes, “There is no sound basis for distinguishing an actual-innocence claim from any other claim that is alleged to have produced a wrongful conviction.”
Justice Stevens, joined by Justices Ginsburg and Breyer, answered Justice Scalia’s dissent, concluding “the substantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an evidentiary hearing. Simply put, the case is sufficiently ‘exceptional’ to warrant utilization of this Court’s Rule 20.4(a), 28 U. S. C. §2241(b), and our original habeas jurisdiction.” (emphasis added).
Read the dissenting opinion of Justice Scalia and the concurring opinion of Justice Stevens here:
