Execution Delayed: Dan Slater at the Wall Street Journal Law Blog posted this morning on the postponed execution of Charles Dean Hood. Our News Scan has the link to the AP story. Yesterday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted Hood a stay so that it could reconsider its previous dismissal of Hood's appeal challenging jury instructions. Last Friday, we blogged that the execution might not occur as scheduled because of allegations that the trial judge and a former district attorney had an affair during Hood's 1989 murder trial. Slater's post reports the two admitted, under oath, that they carried on a secret affair for years. When allegations first arose, the Texas AG supported inquiry into whether the affair took place. However, the affair was not the reason for the stay. Yesterday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals dismissed claims that Hood had been denied a fair trial because of the alleged affair.

Chief Justice of the Supreme Court: For those interested in a little Supreme Court history, Eugene Volokh has a post on a N.Y. Times correction that claimed "there is no such title as chief justice of the Supreme Court." Volokh's feisty post takes us on a quick trip of the historical use of the title "Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States." Apparently, George Washington used it, Thomas Jefferson used it, and so did St. George Tucker in the 1803 Appendix to Blackstone's Commentaries. So if you use the term "Chief Justice of Supreme Court," Volokh doesn't think you need to apologize.

Courts and the Media: Tony Mauro at Blog of the LegalTimes has been posting on Justice Breyer's talks at the University of Arizona's Rogers College of Law recently. Tuesday's post discussed Justice Breyer's new book, and today's post discusses the important interaction between courts and the media. According to Mauro, the judges on the panel "seemed to embrace" the idea that informing the public in judicial decisions was "now part of their job description." In fact, many courts are already taking it on themselves to put "court documents, streamed audio of hearings, everything except what the judge ate for lunch" on the Internet. Mauro states that with the popularity of internet coverage, the media is going to need to step up its own coverage of the courts. If not, "the courts — not usually viewed as cutting-edge in terms of technology — might find their own ways of bypassing the media and communicating directly with the public." Mauro also promises more posts on this topic.