Entries tagged with “Habeas procedure”
Issues
May 25, 2022
Legal Analysts Blast Supreme Court Ruling Denying Prisoners Who Were Incompetently Represented in State Courts Access to Federal Courts to Prove Innocence, Constitutional Violations
In an opinion legal experts have blasted as “nightmarish” and “an abomination,” the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in two Arizona death penalty cases that 1990s amendments to the federal habeas corpus law permit state prisoners who were provided ineffective representation at trial and in post-conviction proceedings to argue that their counsel were ineffective but bar them from presenting evidence of their ineffectiveness that competent lawyers had discovered once the case had reached federal…
Issues
Feb 14, 2022
Federal Court Overturns Death Sentence of Alabama Death-Row Prisoner Whose Abandonment by Counsel Led to Supreme Court Ruling
A federal district court has overturned the death sentence of an Alabama death-row prisoner whose abandonment by his state post-conviction counsel led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision on the right of access to federal habeas corpus review. On January 27, 2022, Judge Karon O. Bowdre of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Alabama overturned Cory Maples’ death sentence, holding that his trial counsel had provided prejudicially deficient representation during the penalty…
Research
Methods of Execution
,Jan 20, 2022
U.S. Supreme Court to Review Two More Cases on Death-Row Prisoners’ Access to Federal Courts
The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review two cases concerning the scope of death-row prisoners’ access to the federal courts in litigating the constitutionality of their convictions and sentences or the method by which states seek to execute them. On January 14, 2022, the Court granted certiorari in Nance v. Ward and Shoop v. Twyford. Nance is a Georgia death penalty case concerning the process by which prisoners may bring challenges to state execution practices. Shoop is an Ohio death…