
Intellectual Disability
Dec 14, 2020
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of December 7, 2020
NEWS (12/11/20) — Texas: The U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld the convictions and death sentences imposed on
State And Federal Info
Nevada was the first state in the United States to use the gas chamber, and executed 32 men with that method from 1924-1979. All executions in Nevada since 1979 have been carried out by lethal injection.
In 1924, the use of cyanide gas was introduced, as Nevada sought a more humane way of executing its inmates. Gee Jon was the first person in the United States executed by lethal gas. The state tried to pump cyanide gas into Jon’s cell while he slept, but this proved impossible, and the gas chamber was constructed.
In 2010, Ronnie Milligan was released from prison after 20 years on death row. Doubts concerning Milligan’s guilt were also raised after a letter written by an eyewitness at his trial, Ramon Houston, was discovered. In the letter, Houston indicated that he killed the victim. The letter also disclosed that Milligan, who testified at his trial that he was in an alcoholic blackout at the time of the crime, was not even at the scene when the victim was killed. Another co-defendant signed an affidavit saying that Milligan was not present during the killing, and that everybody involved conspired against him when they learned he had no memory of that day. Expressing “grave reservations” about Milligan’s guilt, District Judge Richard Wagner sentenced Milligan to a term of life with the possibility of parole and determined that Milligan was immediately eligible for parole.
Roberto Miranda spent 14 years on death row before his conviction was reversed. A witness, Fernando Cabrera, claimed he drove with Miranda to Manuel Rodriguez Torres’ house and waited outside. Cabrera had motive to frame Miranda because Miranda was having an affair with his girlfriend. At trial, Miranda had been represented by an attorney with one year’s experience who had inherited the case when his colleague died. In overturning his conviction, Clark County Senior District Judge Norman Robison wrote: “The lack of pretrial preparation by trial counsel … cannot be justified.”
In 1913, Nevada invented an “automated firing squad” comprised of three rifles mounted on an iron frame that fired simultaneously. It was used once, in the execution of Andriza Mircovich.
The last inmates at Nevada State Prison were removed in January, 2012, but the state’s execution chamber remains there.
Intellectual Disability
Dec 14, 2020
NEWS (12/11/20) — Texas: The U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld the convictions and death sentences imposed on
Intellectual Disability
Dec 07, 2020
NEWS (12/4/20) — Nevada: The Nevada Supreme Court has overturned the death sentence imposed on Mexican foreign national Carlos Gutierrez
Arbitrariness
May 18, 2020
NEWS (5/22/2020) — Washington, D.C.: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has stayed the issuance of its mandate in the federal execution-protocol lawsuit
Lethal Injection
Apr 07, 2020
NEWS (4/7/20) — Nevada: A trial-court judge in Las Vegas has dismissed a lawsuit filed by drugmakers against the Nevada prison system after state officials agreed to return unused drugs it had obtained under false pretenses in a failed att…
Sentencing Data
Feb 09, 2020
NEWS (2/10/20): Jurors reached penalty-phase verdicts in four cases during the week of February 4 – 10, 2020, returning three life verdicts and one death sentence. On February 4, Jamaal Smith was sentenced t…
Mental Illness
Oct 17, 2019
The American Bar Association has urged the Nevada Supreme Court to prohibit the use of the death penalty against people who are severely mentally ill. In a friend-of-the-court brief filed October 3, 2019 in the ca…
Sentencing Data
Oct 07, 2019
NEWS — October 11: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has affirmed a Nevada district court’s decision to uphold death-row prisoner Zane Floyd’s…
Innocence
Sep 06, 2019
Thirty-three years after a trial a federal appeals court described as “a mixture of disturbing prosecutorial misconduct and woefully inadequate assistance of counsel,” a Las Vegas trial court freed Paul Browning (…
Foreign Nationals
May 22, 2019
Two foreign nationals who were sentenced to death in unrelated cases will receive new trials after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear appeals of lower court rulings overturning their convictions. Jose Echavarria (pictured, le…
Recent Legislative Activity
Mar 15, 2019
Two prosecutors with different philosophical perspectives on capital punishment have called on their respective states to abolish capital punishment. Boulder County, Colorado, District Attorney Michael Dougherty (pictured, left), …