Richard Cooey was executed today in Ohio. He weighed almost 300 pounds. One of his grounds for appeal was that his weight would make it difficult for the the executioners to find his veins.

Most of the news reports I've read contain details of his last meal and last words:

You (expletive) haven't paid any attention to anything I've said in the last 22 years, why would you pay any attention to anything I said now?" Cooey said with his final words

Reporter Eric Mansfield, one of the media witnesses to the execution, reports an additional detail: [More...]

The Supreme Court today denied cert for Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis. In September, the Court had granted a stay hours before Davis was to be executed. 7 of the 9 witnesses against him recanted their testimony and the eyewitness evidence in the case was extremely problematic.

Amnesty International responds:

The U.S. Supreme Court denied Davis’ petition for writ of certiorari that was submitted on constitutional grounds of due process and cruel and unusual punishment violations if an individual is put to death despite significant claims to innocence. Davis’ attorneys filed the petition after the Georgia Supreme Court’s narrow 4-3 ruling to deny Davis an evidentiary hearing last March; the ruling was based on technicalities rather than basic questions of guilt and innocence.

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Jeanne Woodford, the former director of the California Department of Corrections, is also the former warden of San Quentin State Prison, where she presided over four executions. She isn't soft on crime. Yet Woodford no longer believes that executions are necessary to society's safety. Her argument is pragmatic: life imprisonment is "cheaper -- much, much cheaper than execution." Yet she also confronts the ethical question:

To say that I have regrets about my involvement in the death penalty is to let myself off the hook too easily. To take a life in order to prove how much we value another life does not strengthen our society. It is a public policy that devalues our very being and detracts crucial resources from programs that could truly make our communities safe.

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Good news today from the Supreme Court. Its decision in June in Kennedy v. Louisiana invalidating state laws that allow execution of those convicted of child rape that did not result in death will stand, despite complaints about a factual inaccuracy in the opinion.

In its 5-to-4 decision in June, the court reasoned that, because so few states allowed the execution of child rapists, there was a national consensus against applying the ultimate punishment to such criminals. Not long afterward, it was disclosed that the lawyers arguing the case, and the justices themselves, had been unaware of a 2006 amendment to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, specifically making child rape committed by service members a capital crime.

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Troy Davis, who many believe is innocent and wrongly convicted, is hours away from execution in Georgia.

The State of Georgia, seemingly unafraid of the risk of putting an innocent man to death, has denied clemency for Troy Davis (TalkLeft coverage collected here). He is scheduled for execution on September 23.

A county jury in 1991 convicted Mr. Davis in the 1989 murder of Mark Allen MacPhail, an off-duty police officer moonlighting as a security guard who was shot to death while responding to a late-night fight at a Burger King in Savannah.

Mr. Davis testified he was at a nearby pool hall and left before Officer MacPhail arrived. The prosecution offered no murder weapon, DNA or fingerprints tying Mr. Davis to the killing but instead relied heavily on testimony from witnesses. Since the trial, seven key witnesses have recanted, saying they were bullied by investigators into lying under oath.

Why is the recantation of seven witnesses something the State of Georgia is prepared to ignore? [more ...]

As the Supreme Court decides whether to reconsider its decision barring death as the penalty for sexually assaulting a child, the head of Saudi Arabia's Supreme Judicial Council, Sheikh Saleh al-Lohaidan, announced that television station owners could be put to death under Islamic Sharia law if they broadcast Turkish soap operas during the holy month of Ramadan.

[The soap operas became] popular in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries this year, provoking a storm of anger among conservatives in Saudi Arabia who fear the spread of secular culture. They gained huge popularity partly because they were dubbed into colloquial Arabic and focused on a Muslim country whose culture many Arabs can relate to. The characters would fast in Ramadan but also drink wine.

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The Texecution of Charles Hood will be delayed, but not because the prosecutor and judge in his case were having an affair. The fact of the affair no longer seems to be disputed.

In the letter to the governor, lawyers for the inmate, Charles Dean Hood, said the former judge, Verla Sue Holland, and the former prosecutor, Thomas S. O’Connell Jr., testified in depositions given late Monday and Tuesday morning that they had a romantic relationship for years.

Whether they were still romantically involved at the time of Hood's trial is unclear, because the judge and prosecutor "had differing recollections about when the affair ended." An independent witness, "a former assistant district attorney, has said the affair continued until 1993." Hood's trial was in September 1990.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals could not bring itself to say that a sexual liason between judge and prosecutor renders a criminal trial unfair. But the court found a different reason to stay Hood's execution, which had been scheduled to take place today. [more ...]

After Maryland failed to pass a bill that would have abolished capital punishment in that state, the state legislature created a commission to "study all aspects of capital punishment as currently and historically administered in the state" and to "make recommendations concerning the application and administration of capital punishment in the state so that they are free from bias and error and achieve fairness and accuracy." The commission has held four public hearings. The latest hearing focused on the risk of a wrongful conviction leading to a wrongful execution.

A member of the commission, Kirk Bloodsworth, has unusual insight into the problem of wrongful convictions. He spent 8 years in prison for a rape and murder he didn't commit. Also testifying was Michael Austin, who spent 27 years behind bars for murder before he was exonerated. [More ...]

Sometimes reports of romantic affairs by public officials, if true, matter. For Charles Dean Hood, set to be executed next week, it could mean the difference between life and death. A judge has set a hearing on whether the judge and prosecutor in his capital case were having a secret affair during Hood's trial:

The hearing will address arguments that Brewer's murder trial was unfair because of an alleged unethical romantic relationship between the judge presiding over the trial and the district attorney prosecuting the case.

Brewer ordered retired judge Verla Sue Holland and former Collin County District Attorney Tom O'Connell to be ready to be interviewed by lawyers Monday – if Brewer agrees with Hood's attorney that the pair should be deposed.

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Joseph Tydings is a former U.S. senator from Maryland. As a former U.S. attorney and as a private lawyer, he has prosecuted and defended death penalty cases. Tydings therefore has credibility when he argues that the risk of executing the innocent is simply too great.

As pro bono counsel, I unsuccessfully litigated a Virginia appeal of a mentally retarded minor who had been convicted and sentenced to death for a crime that I firmly believe he didn't commit, because his court-appointed attorney didn't want to represent him and was basically worthless as his lawyer. After seven years, the Virginia governor ultimately lacked the courage to stay the sentence, and my client was executed.

Given the 129 people who were sentenced to death and who managed to establish their innocence before being executed, death penalty supporters are fooling themselves if they believe the criminal justice system is so flawless that the innocent will never be executed. [more ...]

Texas has not yet killed Jeffery Lee Wood. Nor should it.

Jeffery Lee Wood, 35, "has never taken a human life by his own hands," and "was outside the building in a car at the time of the murder," his attorneys said in a statement.

Daniel Reneau killed a store manager during a robbery. Texas has already executed Reneau. Wood was Reneau's accomplice in the robbery, but he didn't kill anyone. His moral responsibility for the murder is also diminished if, as Wood's lawyers argue, "his longstanding mental illness ... allowed him to be easily manipulated by the principal actor, Daniel Reneau."

A court may never agree to revisit the decision that Wood deserves the death penalty. At least Wood will not die today, as scheduled, thanks to a federal judge who stayed the execution in response to concerns that Wood is not mentally competent to be executed. [more ...]