Death-Penalty News and Developments for the Week of August 19 – 25, 2019: Executions in Texas and Florida

NEWS: Texas and Florida car­ried out the 12th and 13th U.S. exe­cu­tions in 2019 on August 21 and August 22. They were the fourth exe­cu­tion in Texas and the sec­ond in Florida this year.

Texas exe­cut­ed Larry Swearingen on August 21, after the Texas Board of Pardons denied clemen­cy and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to inter­vene. Swearingen’s con­vic­tion rest­ed on what he alleges was mul­ti­ple lay­ers of junk sci­ence and false foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny. Since exe­cu­tions resumed in the 1970s, Texas has now put to death at least ten peo­ple with sig­nif­i­cant evi­dence of innocence. 

Florida exe­cut­ed Gary Bowles on August 22. No court ever addressed the mer­its of Bowles’ claim of intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty, which was pend­ing in the courts at the time his death war­rant was signed. The state refused to per­mit his fed­er­al appeals lawyers to par­tic­i­pate in his clemen­cy pro­ceed­ings, instead appoint­ing a lawyer with no knowl­edge of his case who filed an eight-page peti­tion for clemen­cy that cut and past­ed whole pas­sages — includ­ing the wrong peti­tion­er’s name — ver­ba­tim from a pri­or unsuc­cess­ful clemen­cy appli­ca­tion. Bowles admit­ted to killing six elder­ly gay men across the Southeastern U.S., which formed the back­drop for his cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion for the Florida murder. 

NEWS — August 22: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit has let stand a Tennessee court rul­ing uphold­ing the death sen­tence imposed on 18-year-old offend­er, Christa Pike. The fed­er­al appeals court ruled that Pike had not shown that the Tennessee Supreme Court unrea­son­ably applied clear­ly estab­lished U.S. Supreme Court case law in reject­ing her claim that she had been pro­vid­ed inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel in the penal­ty phase of her tri­al. Judge Jane Stranch con­curred in the out­come, writ­ing sep­a­rate­ly that she believed the exe­cu­tion of a per­son who was 18 at the time of the offense is like­ly uncon­sti­tu­tion­al but that lim­i­ta­tions on fed­er­al review of state crim­i­nal cas­es pre­vent habeas courts from grant­i­ng relief on those grounds.

NEWS — August 21: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has denied California death-row pris­on­er Hooman Panah​’s habeas cor­pus chal­lenge to his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. The fed­er­al dis­trict court had grant­ed Panah a cer­tifi­cate of appeal­a­bil­i­ty that allowed him to ask the appeals court to review his claim that his con­vic­tion for the sex­u­al assault and mur­der of an eight-year-old girl should be over­turned based upon state pros­e­cu­tors’ know­ing pre­sen­ta­tion of false and mis­lead­ing foren­sic blood evi­dence. The fed­er­al appeals court ruled that even if the serol­o­gy evi­dence was false and mis­lead­ing, the oth­er evi­dence against Panah was ​“dev­as­tat­ing” and there was no rea­son­able like­li­hood that the chal­lenged serol­o­gy tes­ti­mo­ny could have affect­ed the verdict.

NEWS — August 20: The Natrona County, Wyoming, District Attorney’s office announced that it intends to pur­sue the death penal­ty in a cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing retri­al of 74-year-old Dale Wayne Eaton. Eaton had been the only per­son on Wyoming’s death row from the time of his con­vic­tion in 2004 until a fed­er­al court over­turned his death sen­tence in 2014. Wyoming has not car­ried out an exe­cu­tion since 1992, and has not sen­tenced any­one to death since Eaton was sen­tenced in 2004.

NEWS — August 20: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has upheld the June 2017 con­vic­tion and death sen­tence of Leeton Thomas. Thomas was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death for the 2015 stab­bing deaths of a Lancaster County woman and her teenage daughter.