Search Results for: cruel AND unusual punishment

The US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit Tuesday held that Arkansas’ three-drug execution protocol does not violate the Eighth Amendment’s protection against cruel and unusual punishment. The case, Stacey Johnson v. Asa Hutchinson, was initially brought by death-row prisoners seeking to avoid the execution protocol in Arkansas. Though Arkansas’ supply of the three [...]

The South Carolina Supreme Court Wednesday blocked the state from committing its first firing squad execution. Through the temporary stay, the planned execution of Richard Bernard Moore scheduled for April 29 has been put on hold. Moore was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1999 murder of a convenience store clerk, James Mahoney. The [...]

The no-knock warrant — a search warrant that authorizes police officers to enter certain premises without knocking and announcing their presence or purpose before entering — is a source of contention in America today. Its element of surprise and extirpative effects makes it a powerful yet contemptible militarized tactic. In this respect, reference is made [...]

Starting from August 5th, the Taliban marched across Afghanistan in only ten days, seizing control of villages and cities across the country. They eventually took over the entire country on August 15th. After conquering the presidential palace, the historical seat of Afghan power, Taliban officials declared the establishment of an Islamic Emirate, vowing to re-configure the [...]

A Texas judge issued an amended execution order Tuesday for Carl Wayne Buntion and set his execution date for April 21, 2022. The scheduling of his execution raises issues of religious expression and implicates the pending Supreme Court case Ramirez v. Collier. Buntion was convicted of killing a police officer in 1990 during a traffic [...]

The US Supreme Court, on Thursday in a 5-3 decision, voted to reinstate the execution of John Marion Grant, allowing Oklahoma to commit its first execution in six years. A shortage of the traditionally accepted lethal injection drug cocktail has led states to experiment with new combinations. In 2014 and 2015, the state of Oklahoma [...]

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam on Tuesday granted posthumous pardons to the Martinsville Seven, a group of young Black men who were tried, convicted and executed in 1951 without sufficient due process and given the death sentence by a racially biased all-White male jury. The pardon comes 70 years after the men were executed by electric [...]

The Trump administration executed Corey Johnson by lethal injection on Thursday. Johnson was convicted for a series of seven murders committed in 1992 and became the twelfth federal inmate put to death since July. The execution followed two separate appeals by Johnson’s attorneys for a stay of execution. In the first appeal they argued that Johnson [...]

The US Court of Appeals ruled Wednesday that the execution of two men on federal death row would go forward this week, overturning a stay that would have delayed their executions until mid-March. Corey Johnson and Dustin Higgs, the men scheduled for execution, were both diagnosed with COVID-19 in mid-December. They requested a preliminary injunction [...]

A federal judge in Indiana on Monday stayed federal death row inmate Lisa Montgomery’s execution. Judge James Halan of the US District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, granted the stay in order to allow the court to conduct a hearing to determine Montgomery’s competence to be executed. Protection from execution for incompetent individuals [...]