Human Rights, the magazine of the Individual Rights and Liberties Section of the American Bar Association, devotes its entire spring issue to the death penalty. All articles are available free online. They include:

• A Thirty-Year Retrospective of the Death Penalty
  By Stephen F. Hanlon
• Monitoring Death Sentencing Decisions: The Challenges and Barriers to Equity By Glenn L. Pierce and Michael L. Radelet
• Mental Disability and Capital Punishment: A More Rational Approach to a Disturbing Subject
  By Ronald J. Tabak

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New York's highest appellate court today upheld a lower court's tossing of the death penalty for John Taylor, the killer of five at a Wendy's restaurant in 2000.

The 4-3 ruling [pdf] by the state’s highest court reinforces its ruling in 2004 that a central provision of the state’s capital punishment law violates the state constitution. It would take action by the Legislature to bring back the death penalty, but Assembly Democrats have shown little inclination to do so.

In 2004, the high court ruled that an instruction judges were legally required to make to jurors in capital cases was unconstitutional. A judge was required to tell jurors that if they could not choose unanimously between a sentence of death and one of life without parole, he or she would impose a sentence that would make the defendant eligible for parole after 20 to 25 years.

Taylor is the last of New York's death row inmates. The state does not now have a death penalty law and it's unlikely the legislature will pass one.

Update: The Supreme Court halted the execution.

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Christopher Scott Emmett is scheduled for execution in Virginia tonight. His lawyers are seeking a last minute stay from the Supreme Court based upon the lethal injection procedure. The state is resisting.

This would be Emmett's second stay. The first was granted two hours before his scheduled execution in June.

Monday night, a Nevada execution was halted. In that case the inmate wanted to die.

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Since the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether the use of lethal injections to execute prisoners violates the Eighth Amendment, at least ten states have stayed executions. Nevada is the latest.

A killer's execution was halted 90 minutes before he was set to die amid arguments from death penalty opponents that the state should wait until the U.S. Supreme Court reviews the constitutionality of lethal injections. ... The American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada appealed to halt any executions in the state.

As the Supreme Court considers whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment, Florida, whose procedures have also come under state challenge (background here, here and here) has also been holding hearings.

Florida's leading death penalty case, Lightbourne, didn't focus on the lethal cocktail he'll likely be shot up with but the records and abilities of the lethal-injectors themselves -- an issue that came to the fore with the Department of Corrections' botched execution of Miami killer Angel Diaz, who took 34 minutes to die on Dec. 13.

Florida's Department of Corrections made some changes after the Diaz execution. Check out the "Shake and Shout" procedure the states' attorney is defending:

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Twenty Texas lawyers have filed a formal judicial complaint against Presiding Judge Sharon Keller for closing the courthouse at 5:00 pm the day of a scheduled execution. (Background here.)

The complaint to the State Commission on Judicial Conduct says Keller improperly cut off appeals that led to the execution of Michael Richard on Sept. 25 despite the fact the U.S. Supreme Court earlier in the day had accepted a case on the propriety of lethal injection, which had direct implications for Richard's execution.

"Judge Keller's actions denied Michael Richard two constitutional rights, access to the courts and due process, which led to his execution," the complaint states. "Her actions also brought the integrity of the Texas judiciary and of her court into disrepute and was a source of scandal to the citizens of the state."

Jim Harrington of the Texas Civil Rights Project which is representing the lawyers, says:

Keller's actions were "morally callous, shocking and unconscionable for an appellate judge."

Here's a brief synopsis of death penalty issues in North Carolina. The bottom line:

In short, not only does North Carolina need a thoughtful and comprehensive review by state policymakers at how it puts people to death, it is also in desperate need of a closer look at whether it is truly capable of avoiding the ultimate injustice – the wrongful execution of an innocent human being. It will be a serious error if state legislators fail to undertake either of these reviews before another person is put to death in all of our names.

Troy Davis is on Georgia's death row. He may be innocent.

Tuesday is Troy's birthday. Check out the Troy Davis "Innocence Matters" Video Project.

Troy Davis' birthday is October 9th and to mark this occasion, a coalition of global supporters have organized this video project to wish Troy a 'Happy Birthday' and to reaffirm to the state of Georgia that 'Innocence Matters!

The Troy video project is simple. Using a webcam, camera phone, camcorder or any other recording device, simply record as creatively as possible a positive video of 60-seconds or less wishing Troy a ‘Happy Birthday’ while reaffirming to the state of Georgia that the global support network behind Troy believes Innocence Matters!

There are 35 videos so far. For the non-video savvy, there's also the NCADP's action alert page for Troy with the ability to send a letter.

You can read Troy's story here.

Hours after the Supreme Court granted cert on the issue of whether Kentucky's lethal injection procedures constituted cruel and unusual punishment, Judge Sharon Keller in Texas, without consulting the other judges, closed the criminal courts at 5:00 pm.

As a result, Michael Richard's attorneys were unable to file for a stay of execution. Richard was executed that night.

Cheryl Johnson, the Judge assigned to handle any late minute motions in Richard's case is angry.

"If I'm in charge of the execution, I ought to have known about those things, and I ought to have been asked whether I was willing to stay late and accept those filings."

Johnson said her first reaction was "utter dismay." Johnson said she would have accepted the brief for consideration by the court. "Sure," she said. "I mean, this is a death case."

There were judges in the courthouse at the time Keller closed it.

Three judges were working late in the courthouse that evening, and others were available by phone if needed, court personnel said.

Amnesty International has released a report tracking the botched executions in the U.S.

"The use of lethal injections in the US has led to at least nine bungled executions, including one in which the prisoner took 69 minutes to die and another in which the condemned man complained five times: "It don't work," a report by Amnesty International says today.

The report contains a catalogue of botched executions dating from 2000, when lethal injection was adopted by 37 of the 38 US states with the death penalty."

As to Texas:

Amnesty notes that Texas, which operates America's busiest execution chamber, has banned one of the chemicals involved for use in euthanising pets, because it does not effectively mask pain.

In other words, you wouldn't do a dog this way.

Yesterday, a Tyler, TX judge set a Nov. 6 execution date for Allen Bridgers.

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Yesterday's question -- "Will the Supreme Court's decision to review the constitutionality of the death penalty by lethal injection cause states to postpone scheduled executions?" -- has been answered by Texas. Ain't nobody tellin' Texas that it can't be killin' people, it seems.

A day after the United States Supreme Court halted an execution in Texas at the last minute, Texas officials made clear on Friday that they would nonetheless proceed with more executions in coming months, including one next week.

Constitution? Texas don't need no stinkin' Constitution. Sentencing expert Doug Berman suggests that states outside the United States of Texas might be more hesitant to conduct executions by means of a procedure of dubious constitutionality.

“There is a momentum quality to this,” said Douglas A. Berman, a law professor at Ohio State University who has a blog, Sentencing Law and Policy. “Not only the Supreme Court granting the stay, but also the Alabama governor doing a reprieve that is likely to lead to other states with executions on the horizon waiting to see what the Supreme Court does. I’ll be surprised if many, and arguably if any states other than Texas, go through with executions this year.”

Let's hope Doug is right.

Will the Supreme Court's decision to review the constitutionality of the death penalty by lethal injection cause states to postpone scheduled executions? Alabama stayed an execution that was to have taken place last night.

Gov. Bob Riley said the state would not execute an inmate named Tommy Arthur while it came up with a new formula for lethal injection. State officials said they wanted to make sure prisoners were completely unconscious before they were killed.

Texas would have killed a man last night, but the Supreme Court stayed the execution.

Although the court gave no reason for its decision, the inmate, Carlton Turner Jr., had appealed to the court after it agreed on Tuesday to consider the constitutionality of lethal injection, the most commonly used method of execution in the United States. The decision suggests that until it issues a ruling on lethal injection, the court may be receptive to requests to delay such executions, at least for defendants whose cases raise no procedural issues.