Death Penalty News and Developments for the Week of September 23 — September 292019

NEWS — September 26: The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has declined to address the state con­sti­tu­tion­al chal­lenge to the Commonwealth’s death penal­ty brought by two death-row pris­on­ers. In a one-page per curi­am order, the court denied the King’s Bench peti­tions filed by Russell Cox and Kevin Marinelli, which had asked the court to exer­cise its extra­or­di­nary juris­dic­tion to hear their chal­lenge. The court ruled that “[d]iscrete review of prop­er­ly pre­sent­ed claims will pro­ceed in the indi­vid­ual cas­es, sub­ject to the juris­dic­tion­al lim­its of the post-conviction courts.”


NEWS — September 26: The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld the con­vic­tion and death sen­tence imposed on Donnie Harris in the 2012 mur­der of his girl­friend by set­ting her on fire. The court also denied Harris’ claim that the destruc­tion of phys­i­cal evi­dence from the fire scene, the fail­ure to record or tran­scribe the court hear­ing in which tri­al coun­sel agreed to the use of pho­to­graph­ic evi­dence in lieu of the phys­i­cal evi­dence, and incom­plete tran­scripts of jury selec­tion vio­lat­ed his right to mean­ing­ful appel­late review based upon a com­plete record of the case. 


NEWS — September 26, 2019: In response to a demand let­ter from a coali­tion of nation­al and local civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tions report­ing dan­ger­ous and inju­ri­ous” con­di­tions on Oklahoma’s death row, the Oklahoma Department of Corrections has agreed to move all qual­i­fy­ing death row inmates” out of the under­ground soli­tary con­fine­ment unit in which they are cur­rent­ly impris­oned. ODOC says it will relo­cate the pris­on­ers to anoth­er unit at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester with­in 30 days. ODOC did not indi­cate what con­sti­tutes a qual­i­fy­ing” death-row prisoner.