[News] Lethal Injection on Trial
Stateline.org has a story today about the new controversies surrounding to use of lethal injections for executions:
Executions were put on hold in 2006 in 12 of the 38 states to adopt capital punishment since 1977 ? in nine states because of questions over lethal injection. [...]
Recent court rulings have narrowed the grounds for capital punishment, and public support generally has slipped. The U.S. public still favors the death penalty by a 65 percent-to-30 percent margin, according to USA Today/Gallup polls over the last three years, but that is down from 80 percent that supported capital punishment in 1994.
Since capital punishment was reinstated three decades ago, nearly 900 of the 1,056 U.S. executions carried out through 2006 were by lethal injection. It is the primary or exclusive form of execution in 37 of the 38 states with capital punishment. (Nebraska uses the electric chair.) [...]
The current court?s stance on whether someone can be executed for a crime short of murder could be tested by recent laws in several states, including Florida, Louisiana, Montana, Oklahoma and South Carolina, authorizing the execution of repeat child rapists and molesters. No one yet has been executed under those laws, but one Louisiana man ? Patrick O. Kennedy ? was sentenced to die in 2003 for raping an 8-yearold girl. His case is being appealed in Louisiana courts.
Legislators in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, and even Minnesota, which doesn’t have the death penalty, have said they will push this year for similar laws.
Posted by ladd at 12:22 PM in Legislature, National | Email this entry
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