Entries tagged with “Bruce Webster”
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Oct 05, 2020
Capital Case Roundup — Death Penalty Court Decisions the Week of September 28, 2020
NEWS (10/1/20) — Washington, D.C.: The federal government has scheduled an eighth execution for 2020, setting a November 19 execution date for Orlando Hall. Hall’s case would be the first federal execution in more than a half-century for the killing of an African-American victim and the second consecutive execution of an African-American prisoner after the executions of five white prisoners and the sole Native American on federal death row. There are currently 55 prisoners on the federal death…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 04, 2019
Judge Finds Federal Death-Row Prisoner Bruce Webster Intellectually Disabled, Vacates Death Sentence
An Indiana federal district court judge has vacated the death sentence imposed on federal death-row prisoner Bruce Webster, finding that Webster is ineligible for the death penalty because he is intellectually disabled. After a five-day hearing in April 2019, in which the court heard live testimony from seven mental health experts and considered deposition testimony from three others, Senior Judge William T. Lawrence of the Southern District of Indiana ruled on June 18, 2019 that new evidence…
Issues
Dec 07, 2010
Supreme Court Declines to Take Case of Federal Death Row Inmate With Mental Retardation
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear the appeal of Bruce Webster, an inmate on the federal death row with evidence that he is intellectually disabed. In 2002, the Supreme Court ruled in Atkins v. Virginia that the execution of a person with intellectual disabilities (mental retardation) would be unconstitutional. Webster’s evidence indicates that three federal doctors determined he had an intellectual disability when he applied for disability benefits in 1993, a year before he committed…
Issues
Federal Death Penalty
,Jul 19, 2010
Federal Inmate Faces Execution Despite Clear Evidence of Intellectual Disability
Bruce Webster faces a federal execution despite new evidence — including evaluations by three doctors — indicating he is intellectually disabled. Although the U.S. Supreme Court banned the execution of the “mentally retarded” (now referred to as “intellectually disabled”) in 2002, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in April denied Webster’s request for a hearing on his mental capacity claim. The court found that Webster had exhausted all his appeals and that the court could not…