"Executing defendants after such long delays is unacceptably cruel," Justice Stevens wrote.
Her subjects -- especially Mr. Goldstucker, Ms. London, and Marian Sling Fagan, the British-born wife of Otto Sling, one of the executed defendants -- seem more quizzical than apologetic when recalling their early zeal.
If we keep executing defendants in cases like this, where the evidence of guilt is tenuous and untrustworthy, we will keep killing innocent people.
[O]ur experience during the past three decades has demonstrated that delays in state-sponsored killings are inescapable and that executing defendants after such delays is unacceptably cruel.
It demeans the justice system for the decision to turn on politics, prosecutorial ego or, worst of all, a capital-punishment bidding war, in which the case goes to the jurisdiction deemed most likely to execute the defendants.
Still, the court ruled that Louisiana could not execute the defendant.
The measure would require a governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days of a review of a capital conviction by the State Supreme Court, and the state would be required to execute the defendant within 180 days of the warrant.
At Mr. Koskovich's sentencing in 1999, Judge Stanton amended the jury's sentence and set a deadline of five years for the state to execute the defendant; otherwise, the sentence would be changed to life in prison.
Therefore, if the court finds that exclusion of "residual doubt" evidence is violative of either the Eighth of Fourteenth Amendments, then the state may not execute the defendant if it chooses to exclude such evidence.
The Florida Legislature this week passed a bill that requires the governor to sign a death warrant within 30 days of a review of a capital conviction by the State Supreme Court, and the state to execute the defendant within 180 days of the warrant.
