An intriguing deathly start to 2007

January 7, 2007

An intriguing deathly start to 2007

In my review of 2006 and preview of 2007 sentencing stories, the death penalty got plenty of attention. But, as detailed from posts listed below, the first week of 2007 was full of extraordinary death penalty developments (without even considering the fall-out from Saddam's execution):

• NJ commission urges abandoning the death penalty (with commentary here and here)
• Lethal injection news and notes and Lethal injection scrummages nationwide
• Supreme Court grants cert on capital mental illness issue
• Ohio's Gov-elect produces capital wondering

Though the New Jersey death penalty report garnered the most media attention, the intriguing comments from Ohio's incoming governor and the Supreme Court's cert grant in another capital case from Texas are the events most likely to significantly impact capital punishment administration and the number of executions this year.

To keep up with all the capital action, one should regularly surf over to Capital Defense Weekly and Ohio Death Penalty Information and StandDown Texas Project. Also, as I noted here at Law School Innovation, this coming semester I am teaching a course on the death penalty and will be experimenting with a class blog that I'll be discussing more in the weeks ahead.