capital punishment

February 24, 2017 (Fault Lines) –In 1982, Troy Wicker, Jr. was murdered. While he was still in his bed, Wicker was shot four times, the fatal shot passing through his eye. Shot with a .22 rifle,...

January 17, 2017 (Fault Lines) – The death-row-prison staff says that they’ve never had anyone fight or struggle on their way to the Death House. Executions are highly scripted events. The prison staff seems to think...

January 10, 2017 (Fault Lines) – The story is almost a cliché. Kentucky men Garr Keith Hardin and Jeffrey Dewayne Clark were convicted in 1995 for the murder of Rhonda Sue Warford. Highly suspect circumstantial evidence,...

January 10, 2017 (Fault Lines) — Convicted white supremacist murderer Dylann Storm Roof is, by many accounts and by all colloquial sentiments, totally crazy. Of course, that doesn’t mean he is insane or incompetent, as a...

October 26, 2016 (Fault Lines) — The title to this post is taken from the above-the-fold main story in Sunday’s Lincoln Journal Star (October 23, 2016). For most, you know nothing, and don’t care to know...

September 14, 2016 (Fault Lines) — Idaho wants to kill Jonathan Renfro. Well, that’s not quite accurate. It would be more accurate to say that Kootenai County wants to kill him. Or to be even more granular,...

June 3, 2016 (Mimesis Law) — We might like to think that the details of who may or may not be executed is not very flexible. This is particularly so if the death penalty is viewed as...

May 13, 2016 (Mimesis Law) — Nation-wide, there is a serious shortage of drugs needed to kill Americans sentenced to death. The situation has grown so dire that Missouri, normally a seeker of handouts, may find...

Apr. 29, 2016 (Mimesis Law) — A capital prosecution in Ohio works roughly this way. The grand jury charges aggravated murder (Revised Code Section 2903.01) and one or more death specifications (R.C. 2929.04(A)). If the jury...

Mar. 23, 2016 (Mimesis Law) — The mother of the victim of someone who’s facing the death penalty seems like an unlikely witness for the defense, but that’s exactly what happened in James Xavier Rhodes’ case:...