The Supreme Court declines to hear 2 cases about "victim impact" evidence in death sentencing, and 3 Justices protest: In the cases denied review on Monday, the evidence was composed of a 20-minute videotape in one cas…
Khalid Sheik Mohammed, on trial , looking like this now : He particularly took issue with a society that allows "same-sexual marriage" and other things that "are very bad." He said he could not accept a U.S. l…
Says the 8-year-old girl Nojud Mohammed Ali , whose lawyer said "I believe there are thousands of similar cases" in Yemen. In other news from the Middle East: A Turkish barber accused of swearing at God is sentenced to …
So wrote Justice White in Coker v. Georgia , and this week, the Supreme Court takes up the question whether the death penalty could nevertheless be constitutional when the victim is a child. Those facts alone are a powerful argu…
Video accessible from the C-Span front page . He's talking to students at Thomas Jefferson High School in Alexandria, VA. ADDED: A little simulblogging: Scalia tells the kids he has 28 grandchildren. I laughed at about 5:40, …
Here 's ABC News presenting the supposed facts underlying a death sentence. The headline is "Man to Be Executed, Although Prosecutors Say He Didn't Kill," and there's a photograph of the man holding up his h…
Howard Bashman has the links. I'll update soon with more detail. UPDATE #1: Erickson v. Pardus is a per curiam opinion that rejects the too-strict pleading requirements the Sixth Tenth Circuit imposed on a pro se prisone…
The WaPo reports on the jury deliberations, involving repeated 11 to 1 votes for the death penalty, with the holdout juror never identifying himself and thus never explaining his position. The foreman said deliberations broke of…
People keep emailing me the link to this NPR report on a speech that Sandra Day O'Connor gave at Georgetown the other day. I assumed I would blog about this speech yesterday after some of my students brought it up. So let m…
A judge orders anesthesia for an execution by lethal injection, but anesthesiologists decline to participate. [The judge] then said officials could go forward later in the day with a lethal dose of the sedative alone — administe…
Schwarzenegger denies clemency. Ah, but he's co-written children's books denouncing gang violence: [D]espite his anti-gang activism, Williams has consistently refused to take part in a debriefing with authorities to provi…
Here's a free link to reach Dana Mulhauser's article in TNR about the new death penalty case (Roper v. Simmons) and the effect it might have on abortion rights. In forbidding the death penalty for persons who commit crim…
Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority in Roper v. Simmons , justifies the use of "international opinion" in constitutional decisionmaking: It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international op…
So says Justice Scalia, dissenting from the Supreme Court's decision invalidating the death penalty for those who were under 18 years old when they committed their crimes. But the Court setting a minimal standard is not maki…
I've written before about the question whether the Supreme Court's Atkins case, barring the death penalty for the mentally retarded, meant for IQ tests to be determinative. Yesterday, the California Supreme Court rejecte…
Another drawing from the margin of my 1981 Federal Courts classnotes. Law people may detect that the topic is habeas corpus -- FvN is Fay v. Noia -- a subject usually placed at the end of the fedcourts course. That placement seem…
So says a lawprof and former capital defense lawyer. Connecticut faces the fact that it has the death penalty: Beyond resurrecting the vicious details of the killings, the pending execution is forcing a confrontation with a disc…
Noam Scheiber writes in TNR about the recent news stories about "security moms" going for Bush. (I wrote about the NYT article here .) Often the stories are larded with a testimonial by a real-live security mom, invari…
There is a group of prospective students at the Law School today. They were just listening to a presentation in the faculty library down the hall from my office, so I know it's a huge group. I believe they'll be auditing …
Speaking of documentaries, I recently watched the DVD of " Aileen - Life and Death of a Serial Killer " which is truly harrowing. I've never watched the film "Monster," where Charlize Theron, in heavy make…