Georgia Sets March 20 Execution Date for Willie Pye Despite Strong Evidence of Intellectual Disability and Previous Finding of Ineffective Representation by Attorney with History of Racial Bias EXECUTED 11.03 PM

UDPATE march 22. 2024

he state of Georgia on Wednesday executed death row inmate Willie Pye, who was convicted and sentenced to die for the 1993 murder of Alicia Lynn Yarbrough.

The execution – Georgia’s first in more than four years – was carried out by lethal injection at 11:03 p.m. at a prison in Jackson, about 50 miles south of Atlanta, the Georgia Department of Corrections said in a news release. Pye did not make a final statement, it said.

Pye, 59, was put to death after the US Supreme Court denied his final appeals late Wednesday. In a clemency petition and various court filings, Pye and his attorneys had argued for his life to be spared, citing an intellectual disability, a troubled upbringing and ineffective assistance of counsel.

“The State of Georgia obtained Willie’s death sentence only after providing him a racist and incompetent defense attorney. And the State has insisted on standing by that death sentence in spite of his lifelong intellectual disability and the fact that he presents a danger to no one in prison,” his attorney, Nathan Potek, said after the execution.

“The people of Georgia deserve better,” he added, describing Pye as a loving son, brother and uncle who “will be dearly missed by his friends, family, and his legal team.”

March 7, 2024

The Georgia Attorney General has announced that Willie James Pye, who previously had his death sentence reversed due to his attorney’s failure to investigate his background, only to see the death sentence reinstated on appeal, is set to be executed on March 20. Mr. Pye’s court-appointed trial attorney, Johnny Mostiler, has been accused of ineffective representation or racial bias in at least four cases involving Black defendants and reportedly called one of his own clients a “little n****r.” Mr. Pye has also exhibited “undisputed” signs of intellectual disability, with an IQ of 68 and a history of learning difficulties. Georgia has not conducted an execution in over four years, and Mr. Pye is the state’s first scheduled execution date in about two years.

Mr. Pye was convicted and sentenced to death in 1996 for the kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder of his ex-girlfriend Alicia Yarbrough. At the time, Mr. Mostiler had a lump-sum deal with Spalding County to represent the entire indigent criminal caseload, which numbered some 800 felony and five capital cases. He also had an active private civil practice. Mr. Mostiler only spent about 150 hours on Mr. Pye’s case, including the trial itself, while studies have found that thousands of hours are typically required for effective capital defense representation. He also spent less than five hours preparing the case for a life sentence, most of it on the day of the penalty phase and the day before. Due to his limited investigation, he did not uncover evidence of Mr. Pye’s traumatic upbringing and intellectual disability. Mr. Pye grew up experiencing “near-constant physical and emotional abuse, extreme parental neglect, endangerment, and abject poverty.” He battled severe depressive episodes and reported hearing voices prior to the killing. However, Mr. Mostiler relied on Mr. Pye’s sister to recruit family members as witnesses and told them only to testify to Mr. Pye’s good character, without delving into the difficulties of Mr. Pye’s childhood. He did not request an evaluation of Mr. Pye’s intellectual functioning or develop evidence regarding the claim even after the state expert tested Mr. Pye’s IQ at 68, in the impairment range. 

At least three of Mr. Mostiler’s clients have been executed, including Kenneth Fults and Curtis Osborne; Mr. Mostiler infamously slept through portions of Mr. Fults’ trial, and he told a white client that he would spend much more money on his case than on Mr. Osborne’s because “that little n****r deserves the chair.” In Frederick Whatley’s case, Mr. Mostiler allowed the prosecution to force Mr. Whatley to reenact the murder while shackled in manacles and leg irons. Justice Sonia Sotomayor later wrote that it was “hard to imagine a more prejudicial example of needless shackling.” A 2001 profile of Mr. Mostiler following his death found that he had handled “more than seven times the number of indigent cases the American Bar Association (ABA) believes is manageable…turning over one case every 100 minutes, less time than a private attorney might devote to a simple traffic violation.” The profile called him the “archetype” of “meet ’em, greet ’em, and plead ’em” lawyers. 

In 2021, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit overturned Mr. Pye’s death sentence, unanimously finding that Mr. Mostiler failed to investigate and present a broad range of available mitigating and rebuttal evidence. The panel did not reach the merits of Mr. Pye’s intellectual disability claim, writing that the ineffective assistance claim was sufficient to require a new sentencing trial, but highlighted substantial evidence of Mr. Pye’s low cognitive functioning. However, on the state’s motion, the Eleventh Circuit reconvened en banc (with the full court) and reinstated Mr. Pye’s death sentence. The court acknowledged that Mr. Mostiler’s performance was deficient, but held that it was required under the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) to defer to the state court’s finding that Mr. Mostiler’s performance did not prejudice Mr. Pye. The majority interpreted AEDPA and Supreme Court precedent to conclude that even if the state court’s decision rests on clear errors, federal courts must defer to that decision if there are “additional rationales” that support it. In other words, the federal reviewing court may theorize reasons for the state court’s outcome and adopt those reasons to justify a state court decision that is otherwise wrong on the facts or the law.

Willie James Pye v. Warden, Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison (US COURT OF APPEALS) 2021

wo judges dissented in full, while two additional judges joined the dissent in part but concurred in the judgment. Dissenting Judge Jill Pryor wrote that the majority had directly violated Supreme Court precedent by “turning to justifications the state never even hinted at” and relying on “a half-baked textual analysis” in support. She further argued that the holding “creates a practically impossible path to relief for habeas petitioners…[i]f federal courts can bury unreasonable findings under an avalanche of new reasons the state court never gave, then unreasonable findings will virtually never be important enough to satisfy the majority’s test.” 

Judge Pryor also noted the “undisputed evidence” of Mr. Pye’s low intellectual functioning. Supreme Court jurisprudence and scientific research recognize IQ scores below 70 as a strong, often definitive indicator of intellectual disability. Georgia has one of the lowest appellate success rates of intellectual disability claims by capital defendants, with an 11% success rate compared to 82% in neighboring North Carolina. Georgia is also the only state that requires defendants to prove their intellectual disability “beyond a reasonable doubt” at trial, and a 2017 study found that only one defendant had ever been found exempt from the death penalty on these grounds in three decades. Research shows that states that significantly deviate from accepted clinical standards, including Georgia, are much less likely to exempt defendants from the death penalty based on intellectual disability.

Judge Pryor concluded that under the majority’s ruling, the “writ of habeas corpus is illusory—impossible, even, to obtain.” She wrote that as the author of the panel opinion, reading the full court’s opinion made her feel like she had “stepped through the looking glass.” However, “what happened during Alice’s time through the looking glass was a dream…This case, unfortunately, is not.”  

Texas Death Row inmate Ivan Cantu faces 3rd execution date, maintains innocence

January 11, 2024

Texas death row inmate Ivan Cantu is now facing his third scheduled execution date after the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals denied him a new trial following his filing of a petition to present new evidence in his case.

Cantu has been on death row for over two decades for murdering his cousin, James Mosqueda, a known drug dealer, and his cousin’s fiance, Amy Kitchen, in 2000. 

Since Cantu’s conviction in 2001, new information and holes in the state’s case raise questions of reasonable doubt, according to Matt Duff, a private investigator who has researched the case since 2019. The new developments in Cantu’s case included a trial witness recanting his testimony and a pair of jurors in his trial coming forward to express concerns about the conviction.

Duff documented his private investigation and created a lengthy, in-depth podcast titled “Cousins by Blood.” His work dives into Cantu’s case with first-hand interviews, including Cantu’s early jail tapes in 2000 and an interview with the state’s star witness that helped put him on death row. 

Ivan Cantu has been given two prior execution dates, but both have been halted. 

In 2022, after the DNA hearing concluded, Cantu received an execution date for April 2023. But Collin County District Judge Benjamin Smith withdrew that death warrant after Bunn filed her appeal outlining the new evidence.

Then, on August 23, a judge dismissed the new evidence for procedural reasons without considering the merit of her arguments. 

This month, Bunn filed a new request with the court to reexamine the ballistic evidence in the case since Duff and other investigators have conducted their own ballistics experiments that cast more doubt on some of the police’s original conclusions. 

To this day, Bunn doesn’t know if she has received everything related to Cantu’s case from the Collin County District Attorney’s Office and from the Dallas Police Department. Part of the issue is that 20 years have passed since the original trial, and many people currently working in those departments weren’t around then. Another issue was jurisdiction—Dallas police, then and now, don’t usually work with Collin County prosecutors—but the murders happened in a portion of North Dallas that extends into Collin County. 

Winning post-conviction relief is extremely difficult in Texas, though not impossible: 464 people have been exonerated of various crimes here since 1989, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. About a third of those cases were overturned due to perjury or false accusations, according to the registry. Nearly one in five was due to inadequate legal defense. 

Almost 70 exonerations were from Dallas County. But Cantu’s case was tried in Collin County, even though it was investigated by the Dallas Police Department. Since 1989, only four people sent to prison from Collin County have been exonerated.  

The judge who presided over Cantu’s trial, Charles Sandoval, has since been heralded “the worst judge in Collin County”. Known as “Hang Them All Sandoval,” he lost his seat in 2008 after developing a reputation for cruelty and for making decisions based not on law but on courtroom favorites. One of the four recent Collin County exonerations was of former Judge Suzanne Wooten, who was convicted of bribery after successfully challenging Sandoval in a judicial campaign. That accusation came directly from Sandoval, but the charges were later overturned and discredited as a baseless vendetta. 

On Valentine’s Day, Cantu will submit his paperwork to tell the prison system who he wants there on his execution day and what he wants the state to do with his body afterward. He’ll explain where he wants his few belongings and any money left in his account to go. 

Sister Helen Prejean, author of the book Dead Man Walking, is acting as Cantu’s spiritual adviser. She’ll be there with Cantu during his execution if his date holds. But in the meantime, she is a fierce advocate for the date to be withdrawn. 

“There’s no way I’m simply going to acquiesce, hold his hand, and pray him into eternity without doing every single thing I can to get the truth out so that Texas does not execute this man who very possibly might be innocent,” Prejean told

Prejean, along with Cantu’s other supporters, are calling on Collin County to again withdraw his death warrant. It’s one of many ongoing efforts to spare Cantu’s life—and to give him another day in court. Officials from the county did not respond to requests for comment for this story. 

“If you want to execute me, that’s fine,” Cantu said over the closed-circuit phone in the Polunsky Unit. “Just give me a fair trial.”

“The criminal court of appeals deemed the claims in Ivan’s application were procedural barred, meaning it should have been included in Ivan’s 2004 habeas filing,” Duff said. “If the claims raised were based on a 2009 law (ex. Parte Chabot) and 2022 recant of a state’s star witness, that information was clearly unavailable in 2004.”

“The court’s ruling is unjust and needs to be overturned,” Duff added. 

Cantu responded to the court’s decision on death row through the Texas Department of Criminal Justice email system.

“I’m disappointed with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for not reviewing my case on the merits,” Cantu writes. “I’m entitled to a new trial according to state law precedent and the constitution of the United States.”

“Where is State Rep. Jeff Leach?” Cantu added. “Leach advocates for other death row inmates such as Melissa Lucio and Jeffery Wood, who are not even from Collin County. Why isn’t he advocating for the injustice occurring in his own backyard?”

Texas State Rep. Jeff Leach was contacted for comment by phone and via email on Friday, Sept. 1, and again on Monday, Sept. 5, and has yet to reply as of noon on Wednesday, Sept. 6. 

Cantu’s execution date is scheduled for Feb. 28, 2024. 

Documentary

Federal judge says Alabama can conduct nation’s 1st execution with nitrogen gas; appeal planned

January 10, 2024

Alabama will be allowed to put an inmate to death with nitrogen gas later this month, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, clearing the way for what would be the nation’s first execution using a new method the inmate’s lawyers criticize as cruel and experimental.

U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker rejected inmate Kenneth Eugene Smith’s request for a preliminary injunction to stop his scheduled Jan. 25 execution by nitrogen hypoxia. Smith’s attorneys have said Alabama is trying to make Smith the “test subject” for an untried execution method after he survived the state’s previous attempt to put him to death by lethal injection.

Why it matters: This untested hypoxia execution method, the first of its kind in the U.S., could prove to be “painful and humiliating,” human rights experts said.

• “Hypoxia is a state in which oxygen is not available in sufficient amounts at the tissue level to maintain adequate homeostasis,” per research in the National Institutes of Health.

Smith’s attorney, Robert Grass, said he will appeal the decision but declined further comment. The question of whether the execution can ultimately proceed could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Smith, now 58, was one of two men convicted of the murder-for-hire of a preacher’s wife that rocked Alabama in 1988. Prosecutors said Smith and the other man were each paid $1,000 to kill Elizabeth Sennett on behalf of her husband, who was deeply in debt and wanted to collect on insurance.

Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall praised Wednesday’s decision, saying it moves the state closer to “holding Kenneth Smith accountable for the heinous murder-for-hire slaying” he was convicted of committing.

“Smith has avoided his lawful death sentence for over 35 years, but the court’s rejection today of Smith’s speculative claims removes an obstacle to finally seeing justice done,” his statement added.

The state’s plans call for placing a respirator-type face mask over Smith’s nose and mouth to replace breathable air with nitrogen, causing him to die from lack of oxygen. Three states — Alabama, Mississippi and Oklahoma — have authorized nitrogen hypoxia as an execution method, but none has used it so far.

Smith’s attorneys argued the new protocol is riddled with unknowns and potential problems and violates a constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

Huffaker acknowledged that execution by nitrogen hypoxia is a new method but noted that lethal injection — now the most common execution method in the country — once was also new. He said while Smith had shown the theoretical risks of pain and suffering under Alabama’s protocol, those risks don’t rise to an unconstitutional violation.

“Smith is not guaranteed a painless death. On this record, Smith has not shown, and the court cannot conclude, the Protocol inflicts both cruel and unusual punishment rendering it constitutionally infirm under the prevailing legal framework,” Huffaker wrote in the 48-page ruling.

Huffaker also wrote that there wasn’t enough evidence to find the method “is substantially likely to cause Smith superadded pain short of death or a prolonged death.”

Smith survived a prior attempt to execute him. The Alabama Department of Corrections tried to give Smith a lethal injection in 2022 but called it off when authorities couldn’t connect two intravenous lines.

The Rev. Dr. Jeff Hood, Smith’s spiritual adviser who plans to be with Smith during the execution, said he was troubled by the ruling. “Horror is an understatement. The State of Alabama now has the permission of a federal court to suffocate its citizens,” Hood said.

Experts appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council earlier this month cautioned that, in their view, the execution method would violate the prohibition on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment.

Wednesday’s ruling followed a December court hearing and legal filings in which attorneys for Smith and Alabama gave diverging descriptions of the risks and humaneness of death from nitrogen gas exposure.

The state attorney general’s office had argued that the deprivation of oxygen would “cause unconsciousness within seconds, and cause death within minutes.” Its court filings compared the new execution method to industrial accidents in which people passed out quickly and died after exposure to nitrogen gas.

But Smith’s attorneys noted in court filings that the American Veterinary Medical Association wrote in 2020 euthanasia guidelines that nitrogen hypoxia is an acceptable method of euthanasia for pigs but not for other mammals because it could create an “anoxic environment that is distressing for some species.”

Smith’s attorneys also argued that the gas mask, which sits over the nose and mouth, would interfere with Smith’s ability to pray aloud or make a final death chamber statement.

The attorney general’s office called those concerns speculative.

Alabama’s prison system agreed to minor changes to settle concerns that Smith’s spiritual adviser would be unable to minister to him before the execution. The state wrote in a court filing that the adviser could enter the execution chamber before the mask was placed on Smith’s face to pray with him and anoint him with oil.

The murder victim Sennett was found dead on March 18, 1988, in the home she shared with her husband Charles Sennett Sr. in Alabama’s northern Colbert County. The coroner testified the 45-year-old woman had been stabbed repeatedly. Her husband, then the pastor of the Westside Church of Christ, killed himself when the murder investigation focused on him as a suspect, according to court documents.

Smith’s initial 1989 conviction was overturned on appeal. He was retried and convicted again in 1996. The jury recommended a life sentence by a vote of 11-1, but a judge overrode the recommendation and sentenced Smith to death. Alabama no longer allows a judge to override a jury’s decision on death penalty decisions.

John Forrest Parker, the other man convicted in the case, was executed in 2010.

Supreme Court Opinion (pdf)

Alabama Appellate courts Case View Kenneth Eugene Smith v. State of Alabama

EXECUTION CARRIED OUT TEXAS DAVID RENTERIA 16/11/2023, 22 years after child abduction, killing

HUNTSVILLE, Texas − David Santiago Renteria spoke his last words Thursday night, strapped to a gurney at the Huntsville Unit, minutes before being executed in the 2001 abduction and killing of 5-year-old Alexandra Flores.

Renteria, 53, was injected with a lethal dose of pentobarbital Thursday, Nov. 16, on a dark, cold and rainy evening at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s prison. His time of death was 7:11 p.m. CST, prison officials said.

With his family and Alexandra’s family present, Renteria gave his final statements.

Killer’s final words

Renteria prayed before singing a hymn in English and another in Spanish after witnesses, including relatives of his victim, entered the death chamber and watched through a window a few feet from him during his execution.

Looking at his victim’s relatives, Renteria also said: “There is not a day that goes by that I do not think about the fateful events of that day and what transpired.

“There are no words to describe what you’re going through, and I understand that.”

He told his sister and a friend, watching through another window, that he was “good… strong”.

“I love you all, I truly do. I’ll see you in the next life,” Renteria added.

He then began reciting The Lord’s Prayer as the drugs began flowing. “Our father, who art in heaven” is as far as he got.

“I taste it,” he said of the drug, before mumbling something and all movement stopped.

The Renteria family watched the execution from a different room from Alexandra’s family. Glass windows separated the witnesses from Renteria.

This photo released by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice shows death row inmate David Renteria. Renteria, a Texas inmate convicted of strangling a 5-year-old girl taken from an El Paso store and then burning her body nearly 22 years ago is facing execution. (Texas Department of Criminal Justice)

Alexandra’s sister, Sandra Frausto, and brother, Ignacio Frausto, attended the execution.

Renteria’s sister Cecilia Esparza and a friend also were present.

Esparza collapsed when she walked into the viewing room, and prison officials brought her a chair and she cried. Renteria told his sister through the glass, “I love you.”

Last days on Texas death row for one of El Paso’s most notorious killers

Renteria spent his final days meeting with visitors, laying in bed, watching TV through a cell door and sleeping, a Death Watch report states. The times listed below are in Central time zone.

On his execution day, starting at 12:15 a.m., he sat on his bed and began writing. The report does not state what he wrote.

He began packing up his property about 2:30 a.m., before sitting on the floor and reading a book around 4 a.m., the report states. He then continued packing up his property and cleaning the floor between 5 to 7:30 a.m.

Renteria was allowed to talk to fellow inmates at 7:30 a.m., before meeting with visitors from 8 to 11:30 a.m., the death watch states.

He was then transferred from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas, to the Huntsville Unit to await his execution.

A victim of Renteria’s from a different criminal incident and her mother also attended the execution. Renteria was previously convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison for indecency with a child in El Paso.

The execution was also attended by 14 state law enforcement and governmental officials.

Renteria grew up in the Lower Valley and was a tribal member of the Ysleta del Sur Pueblo, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.

While in prison, he rededicated himself to his Roman Catholic faith, the coalition reported.

Renteria’s execution ends a nearly 22-year legal battle waged in what has been described as one of the most heinous crimes committed in El Paso.

“I’ve always been a supporter of the death penalty and from a law enforcement perspective, I just think some people are too dangerous to be in our society and that is certainly one individual who I think that that the death penalty is absolutely appropriate,” El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles said. “It’s a long time coming. I think it’s been what? Twenty-one years. I was actually the assistant (El Paso police) chief, (Carlos) Leon was the chief when that horrific crime occurred. It was really tough on everybody. I can’t even imagine what that family went through and what they’re still going through today.

“Hopefully, this will give them a little bit of relief to help them in their recovery that is going to take the rest of their lives, Wiles said. “I can’t even imagine losing my 5-year-old daughter to such a horrific crime.”

Justice served for Alexandra Flores in 2001 abduction nearly 22 years later

Renteria’s execution came two days before the 22nd anniversary of the day he kidnapped 5-year-old Alexandra Flores from an El Paso Walmart, strangled her to death and then burned her body. It also comes six days before his 54th birthday.

Renteria abducted Alexandra Nov. 18, 2001, as she was Christmas shopping with her parents at an El Paso Lower Valley Walmart.

Her parents realized she was missing and searched the store but could not find her. Alexandra was seen on store surveillance video exiting the store about 5:15 p.m. with Renteria.

Alexandra’s body was found about 7:10 a.m. the next day in an alley 16 miles (25km) away.. She was naked and partially burned in a carport near Downtown El Paso.

An autopsy revealed Alexandra was strangled to death and then set ablaze, court documents state. Investigators later revealed there were no signs of sexual assault.

A palm print on a plastic bag found over Alexandra’s head was determined to be from Renteria, court documents state.

El Paso Police Department investigators discovered that a vehicle registered to Renteria was at 9441 Alameda Ave. at the time and date of Alexandra’s disappearance. Renteria also told police he was at the location at the time and date of her disappearance, court documents state.

Renteria went to trial for the death of Alexandra in September 2003. He claimed in his trial that Barrio Azteca gang members forced him to kidnap the girl and someone else was the person who killed her, court records show.

A jury convicted him of capital murder and he was sentenced to death.

Appeals court justices heard the case in 2006 and upheld the conviction. However, the justices ordered a new sentencing phase of the trial.

The resentencing was ordered because of “exclusion of evidence showing the defendant’s remorse violated due process by preventing defendant from rebutting the State’s case when the State left jury with false impression and emphasized it,” the justices wrote in their opinion.

A May 15, 2008, El Paso Times article reporting David Santiago Renteria was given the death penalty during his resentencing hearing. 

KTSM 9 NEWS

DAVID SANTIAGO RENTERIA v. THE STATE OF TEXAS (Original)

El Paso Sheriff Deputy Peter Herrera’s family speaks after death penalty sentence

Hank Skinner died February 16, 2023

Henry “Hank” Skinner

Wednesday, September 13, 2023 at 6:00 pm

Execution COMMUTED

Death has commuted the death sentence of Hank Skinner. He died in hospital Feb. 16, 2023, of complications from surgery. The history of his previous execution date of Sept. 13, 2023: His latest execution date is one in a series of many over the years, marked by stays and wrangling over the testing of various pieces of crime-scene evidence for DNA. Skinner and his French wife insist he is innocent of the triple homicide for which he was convicted. His 2023 death date was set after a district court judge ruled against Skinner, saying it was “reasonably probable” he would have still been convicted of the murders even if recently conducted DNA evidence had been available at his 1995 trial. Skinner was convicted of murdering his girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two adult sons, Randy Busby and Elwin Caler, in 1993 at their Pampa home.

Texas claims it’s ‘too late’ for DNA testing which could get inmate off death row

October 10, 2022

Featured Image Credit: AP/Shutterstock/Paul Weber

The state of Texas is fighting to dismiss a civil rights suit arguing for DNA testing which could prove the innocence of a death row inmate.

Rodney Reed was sentenced to death in 1998 for the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites in Bastrop, Texas, and remains on death row as he continues to maintain his innocence.

Stites was just 19 at the the time of her death, and was found dead along a country road. She had been engaged to a man named Jimmy Fennell, a police officer in the neighbouring town, and had allegedly introduced Reed to her co-worker, Suzen Hugan, as a friend.

Hugan told The Intercept Stites was ‘flirty’ with Reed, saying “it seemed like more than a friendship,” however Texas claims Reed was actually a stranger to Stites. 

After Stites was killed, sperm evidence recovered from her body was matched to Reed. An investigation by law enforcement uncovered no evidence that the pair knew each other, though Reed claims he and Stites were having an affair and that the DNA was from a consensual encounter.

Meanwhile, Fennell has been accused by some as having known about the alleged affair. He has denied the claims.

Over his years on death row, Reed has argued for the testing of crime scene evidence, including the alleged murder weapon, however reluctance on post-conviction DNA testing in the state has made things tough for the inmate.

In 2019, Reed took the case to federal court with the argument that Texas violated his due process rights by denying his bid for forensic testing, but the state is trying to get the suit dismissed with the argument that Reed waited too long to file his federal claim.

Texas is using the statute of limitations to argue its side, claiming Reed had a two-year window to file his federal claim after he was first denied DNA testing in 2014.

However, Reed has argued that filing earlier would have meant filing before the Court of Criminal Appeals had considered his case, meaning he would not have a final decision in the matter on which to base his suit.

It wasn’t until 2017 that the CCA issued its final ruling, and Reed’s suit was filed less than two years later.

Texas, meanwhile, argues Reed should have brought the case in the two years after 2014 because there is ‘no provision of Texas law’ that required him to appeal to the CCA.

As the battle continues, the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the state, meaning the Supreme Court is now set to hear the case on 11 October.

Advocates fight for Oklahoma inmate weeks before scheduled execution

October 10, 2022

Advocates continue to fight for the life of Oklahoma death row inmate Richard Fairchild.

Fairchild is scheduled to be executed on Nov. 17. He has a clemency hearing with the Oklahoma State Pardon and Parole Board Wednesday morning.

Fairchild has sat on death row for nearly 30 years. He was convicted of killing his girlfriend’s 3-year-old son in Del City in 1993.

According to his legal team, Fairchild suffers from multiple mental illnesses and is unfit to be executed.

Rev. Don Heath works with the Oklahoma Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. He spoke at a press conference Friday discussing the fight to save Fairchild’s life.

“Richie Fairchild has been a model prisoner and has repeatedly expressed remorse for killing Adam Broomhall,” Heath said. “He is 62 years old and suffers from brain damage. He already has served 25 years in prison for his crime and is asking to be allowed to die in prison of natural causes instead of by poisoning by the state. This case cries out for mercy and forgiveness.”

Additional petitions are scheduled to be delivered to Gov. Kevin Stitt a few days before Fairchild’s scheduled execution. If the Pardon and Parole Board recommends clemency, Gov. Stitt will have the final say.

Execution warrant sought for Nevada death row inmate Zane Floyd

As lawmakers weigh the future of capital punishment in Nevada, Clark County prosecutors plan to seek a warrant of execution for a death row inmate.

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, deputies from District Attorney Steve Wolfson’s appellate division could ask a judge to sign the paperwork for Zane Floyd in the coming weeks.

The 45-year-old Floyd was convicted of killing four people and wounding another inside a Las Vegas supermarket in June 1999.

The Review-Journal reports that Floyd’s federal appeals were exhausted last November. However, a bill introduced in the state Assembly would make Nevada the 24th state to abolish the death penalty and the sentences of 70 men on Death Row would be commuted to life in prison. 

Texas’ highest criminal court tosses death sentence of Raymond Riles, state’s longest-serving death row inmate

Riles has been deemed mentally incompetent for execution repeatedly in his decades on death row.

April 14, 2021

Raymond Riles has been on Texas’ death row longer than anyone else, first sent there in 1976. Despite several execution dates being set, he has repeatedly been deemed mentally incompetent to be put to death, instead lingering on the row and the prison’s psychiatric units for more than 45 years. At one point, he set himself on fire and was hospitalized for months.

Raymond Riles

On Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals tossed his death sentence.

The state court sent his case back to Harris County to again determine his punishment because the jury wasn’t instructed to weigh his mental illness when deciding between a punishment of life in prison or death. The Harris County District Attorney’s Office, which supported tossing the sentence, did not immediately respond to questions Wednesday as to whether the office would again seek the death penalty. His conviction of capital murder is not changed.

Copiah County man convicted of capital murder will remain on death row

David Dickerson was convicted for the murder of Paula Hamilton in 2012.

A Copiah County man will remain on death row.

The State Supreme Court denied the appeal of 51-year-old David Dickerson. He was convicted for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Paula Hamilton, who was the mother of his daughter.

Paula Hamilton

Dickerson shot Hamilton to death and then burned her body. He was convicted of capital murder in 2012.

Dickerson appealed his conviction and death sentence based upon an alleged intellectual disability.

In a mental evaluation, Dickerson was ruled mentally competent to stand trial and doctors said he had no credible symptoms of mental illness according to court documents.

The doctors also said Dickerson was uncooperative and fabricated psychiatric symptoms. His appeal was denied Thursday.