The Capital Punishment Thread

[Isgrimnur]

Buzzfeed

In late January 2015, agents with India’s drug enforcement agency raided a small drug supplier operating out of a mall between a jewelry store and an ice cream shop in India’s western state of Gujarat.

They arrested five men in their twenties, who Indian authorities say were selling psychotropic drugs and opioids illegally to people in the US and Europe.

Agents seized a massive amount of drugs that included generic versions of drugs including Xanax, Viagra, Ritalin, Ambien, and opioids similar to morphine. The company, Provizer Pharma, was selling drugs online.
...
The men — who were equal partners in a company called Provizer Pharma — were detained by authorities for more than nine months for alleged violations of India’s Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act. The men were released on bail in November 2015, according to Indian court documents obtained by BuzzFeed News.

But teens and twenty-somethings weren’t the only Americans who were allegedly trying to score drugs from this company in India.

The state of Texas was also looking to buy execution drugs from them.

[Isgrimnur]

Texas

The Supreme Court blocked the execution of a Texas murderer Wednesday because of racially discriminatory testimony presented by his own defense team.

The 6-2 ruling was the second in the court's new term to overturn a death sentence, and it could be a harbinger of things to come. The justices heard another death penalty case from Texas in November that hinges on a prisoner's intellectual disability.

Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the ruling in favor of Duane Buck, who murdered his former girlfriend in 1996. He was sentenced to death following the testimony of a defense witness who said he would be more dangerous in the future because he is black.
...
Texas had agreed several years after Buck's trial to reconsider the sentences of seven prisoners as a result of similar testimony, but they excluded Buck because the prosecution was not to blame. Roberts said such testimony from the defense is even more prejudicial.
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Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. Thomas wrote that the racial testimony was secondary to "the heinousness of petitioner's crime and his complete lack of remorse" for shooting his former girlfriend in the street as her children watched.

[Isgrimnur]

Nebraska

Nebraska, which was still using an electric chair the last time it executed someone in 1997, has said Mr. Moore will be the state’s first execution by lethal injection, using a combination of four drugs, including fentanyl. Nebraska officials have refused to disclose where they obtained the drugs. The execution would be the nation’s first to use fentanyl, the powerful synthetic opioid that has been at the center of the nation’s overdose crisis.
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The crimes Mr. Moore committed — the murders of two Omaha taxi drivers, Reuel Van Ness Jr. and Maynard Helgeland, during a five-day span in 1979 — occurred so long ago that many in Nebraska know about them only through newspaper articles.

For years, Mr. Moore, who admitted to the killings, has made it clear that he is ready to die. He has dismissed his lawyers and refused to take part in efforts to spare his life. He has told friends that, as a born-again Christian, he believes he will be in the presence of God upon his death, his sins forgiven, said Geoff Gonifas, his longtime pastor.
...
In 2016, in part through the governor’s efforts, 61 percent of Nebraska voters chose to rescind a ban on the death penalty that an unlikely coalition of Democratic and Republican lawmakers had passed a year before.

[Isgrimnur]

A death sentence in Pennsylvania isn't really a death sentence. They haven't put anyone to death for like 20 years, despite having one of the highest death row populations. May be why the feds are getting first crack.

Not an issue in Texas (September):

For the second time in two days, Texas carried out an execution Thursday. It was the state’s 10th execution of the year, and the 18th in the nation.

Daniel Acker, 46, was put to death in Huntsville’s execution chamber hours after the U.S. Supreme Court denied his last appeal, just 24 hours after another man, Troy Clark, died by lethal injection in the same spot.

And we keep adding more:

A Dallas County jury sentenced Kristopher Love, 34, to death for the murder of Dallas pediatric dentist Kendra Hatcher, 35, in a parking garage in September 2015.

The jury found him guilty of capital murder last Thursday, October 25.
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Prosecutors said Hatcher had a new boyfriend who had an obsessive ex, Brenda Delgado. She is accused of hiring Love to ambush and kill Hatcher.

Crystal Cortes, 26, admitted to jurors that she was an integral part of the plan to kill Hatcher after Delgado began shopping for someone willing to carry out the murder.

[LawBeefaroni]

I think there is moratorium in effect in Pennsylvania.

[Isgrimnur]

CBS News

[John William King,] who orchestrated one of the most gruesome hate crimes in U.S. history is set to be executed Wednesday for the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. nearly 21 years ago.
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If executed, King would be the fourth inmate put to death this year in the U.S. and the third in Texas, the nation's busiest capital punishment state.
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King's attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to halt his execution, arguing that King's trial lawyers violated his constitutional rights by not presenting his claims of innocence and conceding his guilt. His lawyers cited a 2018 Supreme Court ruling in a Louisiana case in which the justices said that a lawyer for a criminal defendant cannot override his client's wish to maintain his innocence at trial.
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King, who grew up in Jasper and was known as "Bill," will be the second man executed in the case. Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed in 2011. The third participant, Shawn Allen Berry, was sentenced to life in prison.

[Alefroth]

You'd think folks would think twice before committing crimes in Texas.

[Isgrimnur]

Not everyone has access to a convertible and a convenient cliff.

[GreenGoo]

Or a best friend to willingly join them.

(Hope I got this one).

Edit: typo.

Also, good.

[Isgrimnur]

You did.

[Isgrimnur]

NBC News

Texas prison officials say the last written words of condemned inmates will no longer be shared publicly, marking another fresh change to execution day procedures in the nation's busiest death chamber.

The new policy Tuesday follows outrage by a state lawmaker who in 2011 also put a halt to Texas death row inmates choosing their final meals.

State Sen. John Whitmire had chastised prison officials for reading an avowed racist's final written statement after he was executed last week for the 1998 dragging death of James Byrd Jr., a black man.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice now says the agency will only publicly relay verbal statements made in the execution chamber.

Texas prison officials earlier this month also stopped allowing clergy in the death chamber.