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Thursday, March 29, 2007

Ind. Decisions - More on "Supreme Court sets execution date in 1984 stabbing death"

Prof. Douglas Berman of Sentencing Law & Policy Blog has posted this entry today, which I quote in full:

Tracking the execution realities of 2007

Though there is constant chatter about capital punishment nationwide, I cannot help highlighting again that only one state is continuing to administer the death penalty.

As detailed in this Houston Chronicle story, Texas executed its tenth murderer of 2007 last night, and it has another execution scheduled for tonight and three more scheduled in April. (As discussed here, one of the scheduled April execution is a woman with a distinctive claim of innocence.)

Meanwhile, mostly as a result of lethal injection litigation, no other state in the country has executed anyone since an early January execution in Oklahoma. And over the last five months there have been only 3 execution outside Texas.

As detailed here at DPIC, these dynamics could change soon. There are federal and Ohio executions scheduled for April, and Tennessee and Nebraska have executions scheduled for May. But even if other states get back in the execution business, it seems likely that 2007 will have the fewest US executions in over a decade.

I have just written Prof. Berman to point out that Indiana remains in the mix.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 29, 2007 01:59 PM
Posted to Indiana Decisions