Last Minute Appeals in Scheduled Tennessee Execution: Attorneys for Tennessee death row inmate Stephen Michael West are seeking a stay for tomorrow's scheduled execution, attacking the state's three-drug protocol as unconstitutional. In response to a state chancellor's ruling last week, Tennessee added additional precautions to ensure the inmate is unconscious after the first drug is administered, requiring the warden to brush a hand over the inmate's eyelashes and gently shake the inmate. Though the Tennessee Supreme Court approved the modified plans, West's attorneys today appealed to both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Sixth Circuit, arguing "[d]efendants waited until the eve of Thanksgiving holidays to spring a new protocol on the court and Mr. West with nothing to demonstrate its constitutionality." West was sentenced to death for the 1986 stabbing deaths of a woman and her teen daughter. Lucas L. Johnson II of the AP has this story.
Big Time Mexican Drug Gang Leader Captured: Elisabeth Malkin of The New York Times reports on this weekend's arrest of Arturo Gallegos Catrellon, through whom one Mexican official claims "all the instructions for the murders committed in Cuidad Juaraz pass." Gallegos admitted to ordering 80 percent of the killings in the border city in the past 15 months, including 15 people at a party in January and the wife of another drug gang leader. More than 2,000 people have been killed in Juraez this year as a result of cartel violence.
Justice Stevens on the Death Penalty: In an essay on a book comparing the American and European approaches to the death penalty, retired Justice John Paul Stevens offers his opinion on the current state of capital punishment. Adam Liptak of The New York Times opines the essay is a step towards "forging a new model of what to expect from Supreme Court justices after they leave the bench, one that includes high-profile interviews and provocative speeches."
Big Time Mexican Drug Gang Leader Captured: Elisabeth Malkin of The New York Times reports on this weekend's arrest of Arturo Gallegos Catrellon, through whom one Mexican official claims "all the instructions for the murders committed in Cuidad Juaraz pass." Gallegos admitted to ordering 80 percent of the killings in the border city in the past 15 months, including 15 people at a party in January and the wife of another drug gang leader. More than 2,000 people have been killed in Juraez this year as a result of cartel violence.
Justice Stevens on the Death Penalty: In an essay on a book comparing the American and European approaches to the death penalty, retired Justice John Paul Stevens offers his opinion on the current state of capital punishment. Adam Liptak of The New York Times opines the essay is a step towards "forging a new model of what to expect from Supreme Court justices after they leave the bench, one that includes high-profile interviews and provocative speeches."
"Though the Tennessee Supreme Court approved the modified plans, West's attorneys today appealed to both the U.S. Supreme Court and the Sixth Circuit, arguing '[d]efendants waited until the eve of Thanksgiving holidays to spring a new protocol on the court and Mr. West with nothing to demonstrate its constitutionality.'"
That hyperbole doesn't pass the "so what" test.