With federal death row in its jurisdiction, the Southern Indiana District Court is preparing but does not know what to expect as the U.S. Department of Justice moves forward with the resumption of executions after nearly two decades.
Read MoreThe Justice Department is plowing ahead with its plan to resume federal executions next week for the first time in more than 15 years, despite the coronavirus pandemic raging both inside and outside prisons and stagnating national support for the death penalty.
The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has temporarily stayed an execution scheduled for next week after finding that two issues raised by a Terre Haute inmate were “worthy of further exploration.” Wesley Ira Purkey’s execution was scheduled for July 15, but now it will be stayed “pending the completion of proceedings in the Seventh Circuit.”
A Zen Buddhist priest, who is a spiritual adviser to one of three federal death row inmates scheduled to be executed this month, filed a lawsuit Thursday arguing the Bureau of Prisons is putting him at risk for the coronavirus by moving forward with executions during a nationwide pandemic.
The Supreme Court of the United States on Monday refused to block the execution of four federal prison inmates who are scheduled to be put to death in July and August. The executions, if permitted to proceed after further expected court challenges, would mark the first use of the death penalty on the federal level since 2003.
The US Supreme Court granted a reprieve Tuesday to a Texas inmate scheduled to die for his conviction of fatally stabbing an 85-year-old woman more than two decades ago, continuing a more than four-month delay of executions in the nation’s busiest death penalty state during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Justice Department has set new dates to begin executing federal death-row inmates following a months-long legal battle over the plan to resume the executions for the first time since 2003. If the executions proceed, they would take place at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute.
It’s now year six of an ongoing battle between the Indiana Department of Correction and a Washington, D.C., lawyer who wants to know the drugs used in Indiana’s lethal injection cocktail and who supplies them. In those six years, a public records request, a lawsuit and a legislative change have propelled the dispute to the Indiana Supreme Court, which now has a consequential ruling in its hands.
The longstanding dispute over whether the Indiana Department of Correction can keep the identities of its lethal-injection drug suppliers secret reached the Indiana Supreme Court this week, with the parties offering strongly divergent views on Hoosier public access laws and constitutional rights.
The U.S. Supreme Court refused Tuesday to consider the appeal of an Alabama death row inmate convicted in two slayings.
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear the appeal of what was Wyoming’s lone inmate on death row, possibly clearing the way for his execution.
The Indiana Department of Correction will make another attempt at keeping confidential the suppliers of the lethal drugs used in executions when it appears for oral arguments before the Indiana Supreme Court at 11 a.m. May 27. Oral arguments in this case and the others scheduled for May will be done through videoconferencing rather than held in-person.
The Supreme Court is passing for now on deciding whether juries must find all facts necessary to impose a death sentence or whether judges can play a role, an issue Nebraska and Missouri death row inmates had asked the court to take up.
A federal judge in Indiana has granted a Louisiana man’s motion to stay his execution pending resolution of his habeas action, finding the man made a strong showing that he is intellectually disabled and as a result, the Federal Death Penalty Act forbids his execution.
A sharply divided United States Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the death sentence for an Arizona inmate who was convicted of killing two people in home burglaries nearly 30 years ago.
A Nevada inmate who is fighting execution after being convicted of killing four people and wounding a fifth with a shotgun at a Las Vegas supermarket wants the U.S. Supreme Court to take up his appeal.
The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld the death sentence of an Oklahoma man convicted in the fatal shooting of his lover’s estranged husband.
Death penalty experts say they expect justices of the United States Supreme Court ultimately will decide whether federal executions will resume at the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute.
A federal appeals court’s reversal of Madison County killer Fredrick Baer’s death sentence was the most-read story on the Indiana Lawyer’s digital edition, www.theindianalawyer.com. Indiana Lawyer readers clicked on stories on our website more than 2.6 million times between Jan. 1 and Dec. 10, 2019, according to Google Analytics. Here are the 50 most-viewed story headlines during that time.
Fewer than 30 people were executed in the United States and under 50 new death sentences were imposed for the fifth straight year, part of a continuing decline in capital punishment that saw only a few states carry out executions, a new report issued Tuesday said.
Though a Supreme Court order ultimately prevented the government from executing an Indiana inmate on Monday, an earlier 7th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling would have allowed the execution to proceed as scheduled.