Entries tagged with “Billy Joe Wardlow”

Policy Issues

Youth

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United States Supreme Court

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Jun 23, 2020

Neuroscience Experts: Brain Science Shows Texas’ Use of Future Dangerousness to Sentence Those Under 21 to Death is Unreliable, Unconstitutional

Three pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tions and eight prac­ti­tion­ers in the fields of neu­ro­science and neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy have joined a Texas death-row pris­on­er in chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s use of ​“future dan­ger­ous­ness” find­ings to impose the death penal­ty on defen­dants who were younger than age 21 at the time of their offense. Their brief, filed in the U.S. Supreme Court on June 19, 2020, argues based on “[t]he great weight of sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence” that pre­dic­tions of whether an…

Executions

Upcoming Executions

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Apr 27, 2020

Texas Court Issues Nation’s Seventh Coronavirus Stay of Execution

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has stayed the May 6, 2020 exe­cu­tion of Edward Busby (pic­tured) for six­ty days. Busby’s was the nation’s sev­enth exe­cu­tion post­poned in the United States because of the coro­n­avirus and the sixth in…

Executions

Upcoming Executions

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Apr 06, 2020

News Brief — Fourth Texas Execution Put on Hold Because of Coronavirus Pandemic

NEWS (4/​6/​20) — Texas: A Texas tri­al court has resched­uled the exe­cu­tion of Billy Joe Wardlow from April 29, 2020 until July 8, 2020, the fourth exe­cu­tion in Texas that has been post­poned because of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. District Judge Angela Saucier grant­ed a motion filed by the Morris County District Attorney’s office to resched­ule the exe­cu­tion, rather than with­draw­ing the death war­rant as a defense motion had request­ed. If the court had with­drawn the warrant,…

Policy Issues

Arbitrariness

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Prosecutorial Accountability

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Dec 26, 2019

Billy Joe Wardlow Faces Execution in Texas Based on False Evidence of Future Dangerousness

Billy Joe Wardlow (pic­tured) was 18 years old, when he killed 82-year-old Carl Cole dur­ing a botched attempt to steal Cole’s car so that Wardlow and his girl­friend could pur­sue their fan­ta­sy of run­ning away from their abu­sive homes in Carson, Texas to start a new life in Montana. Wardlow, who had no pri­or his­to­ry of vio­lence, has regret­ted his action ever since. In the cov­er sto­ry for the Winter 2020 issue of the mag­a­zine The American Scholar,…