SCOTUS Watch: Glossip v. Gross

SCOTUS Watch

Glossip v. Gross, Docket No. 14-7955,

on Appeal from the Tenth Circuit

Introduction

“From this day forward, I shall no longer tinker with the machinery of death.  For more than twenty years I have endeavored—indeed.  I have struggled—along with a majority of this Court, to develop procedural and substantive rules that would lend more than the mere appearance of fairness to the death penalty endeavor.  Rather than continue to coddle the Court’s delusion that the desired level of fairness has been achieved and the need for regulation is eviscerated, I feel morally and intellectually obligated simply to concede that the death penalty experiment has failed.”

-          Justice Harry Blackmun

In the current term of the United States Supreme Court, the Justices are set to decide a case which almost literally questions the “machinery of death” and the “death penalty experiment.”   

The Death Penalty: Academia v. Public Opinion

In the past decade or so, the subject of capital punishment has spurred many academics to heated opinions arguing for and against the death penalty.  Some opponents of capital punishment have highlighted the world trend of abolishing the death penalty, noting that China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States carry out most of the known executions around the world, and that “the number of countries that still allow the death penalty has been dwindling.” 

Scaling the Courthouse Steps: Recent Challenges to the Oklahoma State Capital Punishment Secrecy Laws

This article's purpose is to briefly highlight for practitioners some of the news about Oklahoma's ongoing capital punishment dispute and the potential ramifications it could have on capital punishment practitioners. 

On April 21, the Oklahoma Supreme Court issued a stay of execution order for death row inmates, Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner, in the wake of a constitutional challenge to Oklahoma’s state law preventing inmates from learning the source of the drugs used to kill them.