Entries tagged with “Wesley Coonce”
Issues
Jun 22, 2022
On 20th Anniversary of Atkins v. Virginia, Supreme Court Denies Petition to Review Procedural Loophole Permitting Execution of Intellectually Disabled Prisoners
On the twentieth anniversary of its landmark decision in Atkins v. Virginia prohibiting the use of the death penalty against individuals with intellectual disability, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a Florida case that creates a procedural loophole that allows those executions to continue. In a one-line ruling issued June 21, 2022, the Court summarily denied a petition for writ of certiorari filed on behalf of Florida death-row prisoner Joe Nixon, declining to review the state’s refusal to…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Nov 04, 2021
Supreme Court Declines to Review Death Sentence in Case in Which Federal Prosecutors and Defense Agree Defendant’s Intellectual Disability Makes Him Ineligible for the Death Penalty
In a ruling that provoked a sharp dissent from the Court’s liberal minority, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the case of a death-row prisoner whom prosecutors and defense lawyers agree is not eligible for the death penalty as a result of recent revisions of the definition of intellectual disability by the medical community. Rebuffing a joint request by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and defense lawyers, the Court on November 1, 2021 denied a petition by federal death-row…
State & Federal Info
Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 22, 2019
Death-Penalty News and Developments for the Week of July 22 – 28, 2019: Appeals Court Permits New Capital Prosecution in Only Wyoming Death-Penalty Case
NEWS: July 23 — The U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that Wyoming prosecutors may seek the death penalty in resentencing proceedings against 74-year-old Dale Wayne Eaton. Eaton had been the only person on Wyoming’s death row between 2004, when he was sentenced to death for a 1988 killing, and 2014, when a federal district court reversed his death sentence for ineffective penalty-phase representation. At that time, Eaton sought to bar a capital resentencing trial, arguing that the death of…