A brief recently submitted to the Court of Appeals by defense lawyers in the second case argues, for example, that people facing the death penalty in New York should have the right to make a last plea for mercy before jurors consider execution.
They argue that Mr. Cahill was denied a fair trial because a flood of news coverage in central New York prejudiced jurors against him, and they say he was wrongly denied the chance to make a last plea for mercy, as is permitted in some states.
The small mercies that make a teeming city livable -- a place we can live in, a place we can live with -- continue.
She was a renowned interpreter of soul and rock classics, including the Temptations' "Shakey Ground," Barbara Acklin's "Love Makes a Woman," the Buckinghams' "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" and Aretha Franklin's "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man," which Ms. Snow sang with a roof-raising power.
For her, identifying the real-life figures on which the work's "prisoner," "doctor" and "woman who saves children" were based would make "Mercy" an artwork that was also a vision of action in the world.
Here was a dignified man making a simple appeal for mercy, begging that the law allow him to die in peace, supported by his family.
With her husband she toured the United States, made a particular friend of Mercy Otis Warren, and visited George Washington at Mount Vernon.
Also making an appeal for mercy on Saturday was Sukumaran's sister Brintha, who released a brief YouTube video.
"I was not altogether unprepared for the change in Mr Seward's tone," Lyons admitted, having heard from the French legation that Seward had made a similar speech to Mercier a few hours earlier.
