Death Penalty Update

Governor Mike Rounds has placed South Dakota executions on hold due to concerns about the state’s lethal injection procedures. The governor’s decision stopped South Dakota’s planned execution of a “volunteer” that had waived all appeals. This would have been the state’s first execution since the death penalty was re-instituted in 1976. The governor’s directive appears to put a hold in place until at least July of 2007.

Thanks to Rounds’ action South Dakota remains in the club of states with death penalty statutes that have never used them along with Kansas, New York, New Jersey and New Hampshire and joins California, Missouri and Delaware in the club of states with executions on hold due to questions related to lethal injections.

The incompetence of the Texas capital punishment system continues to amaze. Now The San Antonio Express-News reports that the lawyer for Justin Fuller, the 19th execution in Texas this year, "filed an appeal with incoherent repetitions, rambling arguments and language clearly lifted from one of his previous cases, so that at one point it described the wrong crime."

Apparently even the assistant district attorney was disturbed by the quality of the legal brief. This so-called lawyer is still on the list of "competent counsel" for Texas death penalty appellate work.

You will excuse me, but if you live in Texas and you are not OUTRAGED then you are NOT PAYING ATTENTION! The criminal justice system in the state of Texas has a bad case of dry rot and an overhaul is long overdue. I blame the newspapers in Texas for not making the sad state of affairs clear to the electorate. I find it hard to believe that the good people of Texas would tolerate the situation if they knew about it.

In the meantime Texas has already matched its total of 19 executions last year in 2006 and seven more are currently scheduled.

Elsewhere another statistical study, this one based upon cases in South Carolina, has shown that prosecutors are more likely to ask for the death penalty in rural areas or if the victim was white or female.

This is what, about the 50th such study? The Supreme Court originally stopped capital punishment because it was “arbitrary.” Well guess what? Study after study has demonstrated that it’s still arbitrary.

I expect the death penalty in New Jersey to be a thing of the past after the commission studying it issues its report in early 2007. Perhaps that will start he ball rolling and other states that either have not used their statutes or have executions suspended for one reason or another will consider scrapping their capital punishment laws.

It was a bad summer with a total of 14 executions in July and August bringing the total in 2006 to 39.