capital punishment
Executing non-shooters should be barred says Fairfax criminal lawyer
Executing people is wrong. As a Fairfax criminal defense lawyer, I know that even many former and current Virginia prosecutors now support the abolition of capital punishment. However, the machinery of state-sponsored death continues in many of the United States.
Executing people convicted for being accomplices...
Capital defendants are humans – Treat them with dignity
Capital punishment in the United States has proceeded somewhat away from an arbitrary and capricious system that previously allowed judges rather than juries to decide a death sentence, and for people to be executed for crimes other than murder. As a Fairfax criminal lawyer, I...
Fairfax criminal lawyer on snitch testimony causing Pruett’s execution
Why allow inmate snitch testimony to cause an inmate's execution? Testimony from inmates serving substantial prison terms can too often be expected to be manufactured for seeking to improve their lot, with little concern about the truth.
Jordan Edwards – Where do the unjustified police shootings end?
One 2014 day when I entered a nearby courthouse, a sheriff's deputy lamented the backlash of public opinion against police after police shot dead Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. The unjustified police killings continued, including Eric Garner's death on Staten Island following a police chokehold,...
“What legitimate purpose does it serve to hold any human being in solitary confinement for 40 years awaiting execution?”
Praised be Justice Stephen Breyer, apparently the United States Supreme Court's strongest skeptic on the death penalty's Constiutionality, who emphasized on April 24, 2017:
"What legitimate purpose does it serve to hold any human being in solitary confinement for 40 years awaiting execution? What does...
Death row inmates’ champion Steve Bright always inspires me
In 1991, I was still yearning to re-direct my career from the 25-lawyer corporate law firm that I had joined two years later, to something more meaningful. Ever since finishing law school, I went out of my way to meet birds of a professional and...
Capital punishment- SCOTUS denies relief on lethal injection, & then finds ineffective counsel on race-based evidence
example along with the constant execution machines of China, Iran and Saudi Arabia. In all likelihood, Trump's Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch will help allow the nation's death penalty machine to proceed virtually full speed ahead.
This week, the Supreme Court denied relief to a...
Whether Virginia juvenile murder defendants who accepted life without parole are out of luck
In 2005, the United States Supreme Court decided 5-4 that it is unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment to execute those who committed crimes when they were under eighteen years old. Roper v. Simmons, 543 U.S. 551 (2005). Post-Roper, a criminal defendant charged with an otherwise...
Dylann Roof’s quickly-imposed death sentence must not encourage quick death verdicts in other capital cases
Dylann Roof represented himself at his federal capital sentencing trial phase. He put forth no effort to prevent a death sentence, which helps explain how the jury quickly reached a death sentence verdict (within three hours of deliberation) at the sentencing phase The trial judge...
SCOTUS bars capital sentencing recommendations from victims’ families
Today's Bosse decision is more monumental than might first meet the eye. The United States Supreme Court has at least three justices that are very friendly to preserving the death penalty.