South Dakota Wronful death: After ruling, executions reset
HUNTSVILLE, Texas — Here in the nation's leading death-penalty state, and some of the 35 others that practice capital punishment, execution dockets are quickly filling up.
Less than three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ended a seven-month halt in lethal injections, at least 14 execution dates have now been set in six states between May 6 and October. The first, on Tuesday, is in Georgia of a man who killed his girlfriend and another woman.
"The Supreme Court essentially blessed their way of doing things," said Douglas A. Berman, a professor of law and a sentencing expert at Ohio State University. "So in some sense, they're back from vacation and ready to go to work."
Experts say the resumption of executions is likely to throw a strong new spotlight on the divisive national -- and international -- issue of capital punishment.
"When people confront a new wave of executions, they'll be questioning not only how people are executed but whether people should be executed," said James R. Acker, a historian of the death penalty and a professor at the School of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany.
Texas leads the list with five people now set to die here in the Walls Unit, the state's death house, between June 3 and Aug. 20. Virginia is next with four. Louisiana, Oklahoma and South Dakota have also set execution dates.
Some welcome the end of the moratorium.
"We'll start playing a little bit of catch-up," said William R. Hubbarth, a spokesman for Justice for All, a Houston-based ... READ MORE