Entries by Leah Roemer

New drugs and med­ical treat­ments under­go rig­or­ous test­ing to ensure they are safe and effec­tive for pub­lic use. Under fed­er­al and state reg­u­la­tions, this test­ing typ­i­cal­ly involves clin­i­cal tri­als with human sub­jects, who face sig­nif­i­cant health and safe­ty risks as the first peo­ple exposed to exper­i­men­tal treat­ments. That is why the law requires them to be ful­ly informed of the poten­tial effects and give their vol­un­tary con­sent to participate in…

Tremane Wood was sched­uled to die at 10 a.m. local time on November 13. According to jour­nal­ist Hilary Andersson, who trav­eled to Oklahoma to observe the exe­cu­tion, the call from the gov­er­nor came at 9:59 a.m. Mr. Wood learned that his life would be spared at the lit­er­al​“last minute.” While Mr. Wood, his attor­neys, and his fam­i­ly expe­ri­enced over­whelm­ing relief in the after­math of the clemen­cy grant, accord­ing to Ms. Andersson, some also expressed shock at the timing…

Update: Mr. Shockley was exe­cut­ed by lethal injec­tion on October 14. He was pro­nounced dead at 6:13 p.m. Yesterday, Missouri Governor Mike Kehoe denied clemen­cy to Lance Shockley, who is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion today at 6 p.m. However, a recent sur­vey found that Missouri vot­ers, by a bipar­ti­san two-thirds major­i­ty, would pre­fer to see Mr. Shockley’s death sen­tence com­mut­ed. Dr. Nicholas Scurich of the University of California, Irvine, found that 65% of the 440…

This week we are fea­tur­ing some arti­cles from the first part of 2025 that we think are worth anoth­er look. We’ll be back with new arti­cles next week. This arti­cle orig­i­nal­ly ran on February 11, 2025. When California Governor Gavin Newsom announced a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in 2019, he said that the state’s​“death penal­ty sys­tem has been, by all mea­sures, a fail­ure.” He explained that the death penal­ty​“has dis­crim­i­nat­ed against defen­dants who are mentally ill,…

When a lawyer makes a mis­take, who suf­fers the con­se­quences? The​“agency prin­ci­ple” says the client does, under the ratio­nale that clients choose their lawyers and autho­rize their actions. But courts uni­ver­sal­ly apply this prin­ci­ple to all attor­ney-client rela­tion­ships, includ­ing when indi­gent, iso­lat­ed death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­ers are appoint­ed attor­neys by the state, with lit­tle or no means of con­trol­ling their lawyers’ actions. Many com­men­ta­tors have noted the…

On May 1, Jeffrey Hutchinson, a Gulf War vet­er­an, was exe­cut­ed in Florida for the mur­ders of his girl­friend and her three young chil­dren. As he fought behind ene­my lines in some of the most dan­ger­ous regions on earth, bombs rat­tled and nerve gas cor­rod­ed his brain, caus­ing per­ma­nent dam­age that would con­tribute to the tragedy just a few years lat­er.​“His mind was a casu­al­ty, just like any limb lost in com­bat,” a group of 129 mil­i­tary vet­er­ans wrote in a letter…

The sin­gle most com­mon out­come for a death sen­tence in the mod­ern era is for it to be reversed on appeal due to a con­sti­tu­tion­al vio­la­tion. Most peo­ple whose sen­tences are reversed get resen­tenced to life in prison or less, but some pros­e­cu­tors per­sist in seek­ing new death sen­tences even after mul­ti­ple rever­sals. A Death Penalty Information Center analy­sis of the 14 peo­ple sen­tenced to death four or more times for the same crime finds that prosecutorial…

The Supreme Court has con­sis­tent­ly held that​“death is dif­fer­ent”: the​“qual­i­ta­tive dif­fer­ence between death and oth­er penal­ties calls for a greater degree of reli­a­bil­i­ty when the death sen­tence is imposed.” As a result, cap­i­tal defen­dants pur­sue a series of manda­to­ry and dis­cre­tionary appeals to ensure that mis­takes of con­sti­tu­tion­al sig­nif­i­cance are iden­ti­fied and cor­rect­ed. However, death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­ers in Louisiana recent­ly argued that the…

On March 31, the Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of Lance Shockley of Missouri, the 36^th death-sen­­­tenced per­son to be denied cer­tio­rari by the Court this year. At tri­al, Mr. Shockley’s jury fore­man was removed before the sen­tenc­ing phase based on evi­dence of seri­ous bias — but Mr. Shockley’s attor­ney declined the oppor­tu­ni­ty to ques­tion the fore­man or oth­er jurors about the mis­con­duct, and his con­vic­tion, which the fore­man par­tic­i­pat­ed in, was allowed to…