Death Penalty News and Developments for the Week of September 16 — September 22, 2019

NEWS — September 19: Oregon Governor Kate Brown has announced she will not call a spe­cial ses­sion to address whether the state’s new law lim­it­ing the types of mur­ders pun­ish­able by death applies to future resen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings for pris­on­ers cur­rent­ly on the state’s death row. The new law, which goes into effect on September 29, is not retroac­tive and would not over­turn exist­ing death sen­tences. However, it applies to all future cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing pro­ceed­ings, includ­ing resen­tenc­ings of death-row pris­on­ers who are lat­er found to have been uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly con­vict­ed or sen­tenced to death. 

NEWS — September 19: The Kentucky Supreme Court heard oral argu­ment in two cas­es to deter­mine whether to extend the age pro­hi­bi­tion against the use of the death penal­ty to defen­dants aged 18 – 20. A Fayette County tri­al judge ruled in August 2017 that new sci­en­tif­ic research on brain devel­op­ment and behav­ior showed that 18- to 21-year-olds ​“are cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly less cul­pa­ble” for the same rea­sons the U.S. Supreme Court exclud­ed teenagers under age 18 from the death penal­ty in 2005. The rul­ing barred pros­e­cu­tors from seek­ing the death penal­ty against Travis Bredhold (pic­tured), who was age 18 years and five months at the time he is alleged to have robbed and mur­dered a gas sta­tion atten­dant, and Efrain Diaz Jr. and Justin Smith, who were 20 and 18, respec­tive­ly, when they alleged­ly mur­dered a University of Kentucky student.

NEWS — September 17: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has issued a mixed rul­ing in a chal­lenge to exe­cu­tion secre­cy poli­cies in Arizona. In First Amendment Coalition of Arizona v. Ryan, the court ruled that the media and the pub­lic have a First Amendment right to hear, as well as see, the entire exe­cu­tion and pro­hib­it­ed Arizona from turn­ing off the micro­phone in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber while the exe­cu­tion is in process. The court ruled that there First Amendment right of access to courts did not require Arizona to pro­vide infor­ma­tion about exe­cu­tion drugs or exe­cu­tion per­son­nel to the media or to pris­on­ers. However, the court sug­gest­ed that the pris­on­ers might have a due process right to that infor­ma­tion under the Fourteenth Amendment. Arizona has already com­mit­ted to pro­vide some infor­ma­tion about its exe­cu­tion drugs under a pri­or par­tial set­tle­ment agree­ment in the case, and the court’s rul­ing does not affect that agreement.