Nebraska's new lethal injection protocol comes under fire at hearing

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhboAh7AyYtbRPVvbXaDmc-WnCwX_uJuo18WaTN95Hc7fwK9LMLJ5yUHZrwBc2JsQumh9lutWD3cQpSL9KecMq5O3s8nOscIJcd9-u51aRZwKR9br9A5FPYJ2YIvHGPfXwJ-hDv0_uaX38/s1600/Nebraska+the+good+life.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Nebraska, the good life" border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhboAh7AyYtbRPVvbXaDmc-WnCwX_uJuo18WaTN95Hc7fwK9LMLJ5yUHZrwBc2JsQumh9lutWD3cQpSL9KecMq5O3s8nOscIJcd9-u51aRZwKR9br9A5FPYJ2YIvHGPfXwJ-hDv0_uaX38/s400/Nebraska+the+good+life.jpg" title="Nebraska, the good life" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Opponents of the death penalty predicted Friday that a new lethal injection protocol being sought by Gov. Pete Ricketts will mire the state in more lawsuits rather than revive capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This is only going to trigger more litigation that the state will not win," said Spike Eickholt of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska. Eickholt was among 20 people who testified during a public hearing Friday concerning a new execution protocol drawn up by the Ricketts administration to make it easier to obtain the necessary drugs for an execution.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">All but 2 of those testifying criticized the proposal. It was lambasted as violating Nebraska's public meeting laws, allowing unlicensed "pharmaceutical chemists" to participate and permitting the purchase of drugs from secret and shady sources.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It looks to me that a (Corrections Department) director could buy drugs in a back alley," said Dr. Gregg Wright of Lincoln, a former state health director.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Friday's hearing was the 1st step in reviving Nebraska's stalled death penalty. The state hasn't carried out an execution in 19 years, and it has not been able to obtain the necessary drugs to carry out a lethal injection execution.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">2 people testified in support of the new lethal injection protocol, and both were leaders in the campaign that overturned at the ballot box in November the 2015 repeal of capital punishment by the Nebraska Legislature.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">1 supporter, Pierce County Sheriff Rick Eberhardt, who gathered hundreds of signatures for the successful referendum drive, said that voters last month delivered a "work order" to state leaders.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"They are instructing our leaders to find a workable way to carry out a death sentence," Eberhardt said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ricketts, in a statement after the hearing, called Friday's session "1 step toward enacting the will of the people of Nebraska on the death penalty."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He added that his administration would review comments from the hearing before finalizing the proposed regulation.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The new protocol would give the state corrections director wide latitude to choose the type and source of drugs being used, and to keep that information confidential.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The secrecy provisions brought objections from a variety of groups and individuals, including Media of Nebraska, the ACLU, the state's Tea Party and Nebraska's most ardent opponent of the death penalty, State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Anything that the government does on behalf of the people should be done in plain sight," Chambers said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He vowed to introduce another bill to repeal the death penalty when the State Legislature begins its 2017 session next week, and promised it would be better drafted than the "slapdash, loosey-goosey" proposal for the new lethal injection protocol.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nebraska's current protocol was adopted in 2009 after the state switched from the electric chair to lethal injection. It calls for the use of 3 drugs.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But the state has been thwarted in its attempt to obtain them, contributing to the Legislature's vote in 2015 to repeal the death penalty.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Shawn Renner of Media of Nebraska, which represents the state's major newspapers and broadcasters, said the new protocol was directly contrary to the state's public records laws by allowing the state corrections director to pick and choose what records will be released and which ones will be withheld.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Renner called the proposal "illegal" and predicted it would be overturned in court.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Others said that the lack of transparency could lead to the use of impure and suspect drugs, which could result in botched executions or courts tossing out lethal injection as unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">There have been 47 botched executions since 1982, according to a study by University of Colorado professor Michael Radelet, and 35 of those involved lethal injection.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">More than one testifier pointed out that an open process was needed, given Nebraska's track record in obtaining lethal injection drugs. In 2015 the state lost $54,000 when it purchased 2 lethal injection drugs from a broker in India, then was blocked from importing the drugs.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Joni Cover of the Nebraska Pharmacists Association said that while the association was not taking a position supporting or opposing capital punishment, it was opposing the new protocol as having multiple flaws.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">She asked that a requirement to have a "pharmaceutical chemist' as part of the execution team be stricken. Such chemists are unlicensed and lack the education or legal authority to prepare, compound or administer drugs, Cover said. In addition, the state corrections director lacks the authority to write a medical order for lethal injection drugs, she said, and the secrecy surrounding the drugs could put Nebraska in violation of state and federal laws about how such drugs should be handled.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">10 inmates sit on Nebraska's death row.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It may take several weeks before state corrections officials decide if the proposed protocol should be approved or revised.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The attorney general must also review and OK the rules, and the governor must sign them, before they take effect.</div><br />Source: The Smithville Herald, December 31, 2016<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! <a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JBVXEBZLP3WKW" target="_blank">DONATE!</a></b></div><form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_blank"><div style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/fr_FR/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" /></div></form><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div>

Nebraska's new lethal injection protocol comes under fire at hearing

Opponents of the death penalty predicted Friday that a new lethal injection protocol being sought by Gov. Pete Ricketts will mire the state ...

Read more »

Nebraska: Hearing on controversial lethal injection protocol proposal

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnAh4PRMLVNVUqLZN65-ItpMTZUcPfRRvbsE61WhDEKPByTFMNJf84HU0AByW-N8ARKz7BjrDRPtYkjE03MWTTQ5ysKwyhxfmeTDUyBTwAE9-qPoGPmZyVetVwvgy8me2pPKFGSZQ7zWg/s1600/Nebraska+death+chamber.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Nebraska's death chamber" border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnAh4PRMLVNVUqLZN65-ItpMTZUcPfRRvbsE61WhDEKPByTFMNJf84HU0AByW-N8ARKz7BjrDRPtYkjE03MWTTQ5ysKwyhxfmeTDUyBTwAE9-qPoGPmZyVetVwvgy8me2pPKFGSZQ7zWg/s400/Nebraska+death+chamber.jpg" title="Nebraska's death chamber" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nebraska's death chamber</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">A state hearing on a controversial lethal injection protocol proposal will begin at 9 a.m. Friday at the State Office Building in Lincoln. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Omaha Sen. Ernie Chambers, who opposes the death penalty, and says the proposed protocol raises constitutional questions, will be at the hearing, he said, and ACLU of Nebraska will submit testimony. ACLU presented a petition with 2,000 signatures gathered from across the state to the hearing officer earlier this week, said ACLU Executive Director Danielle Conrad.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The petition tells Gov. Pete Ricketts that Nebraskans want transparency in death penalty protocols. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dale Baich is an assistant federal public defender in Arizona who has witnessed executions, including John Joubert's in Nebraska in 1996, and has been involved in challenges to execution protocols in a number of states.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">He said Thursday that transparency is important in execution protocols, because any time the government acts, its citizens should be fully informed. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The protocol as drafted is incredibly vague," he said, "and raised more questions than it answers."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It doesn't seem that a lot of thought was put into the protocol, he said. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Because of this I see years of litigation trying to resolve issues not addressed or contemplated by the drafters," he said. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The state Department of Corrections has said its attorney, Julie Smith, drafted the protocol, but no drafts, documentation, correspondence or paper trail was available when requested through Freedom of Information requests by the Journal Star. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Those wanting to testify on the revisions to the protocol, written shortly after Nebraskans voted to keep the death penalty as an option for first-degree murder convictions, can do so before a hearing officer at 301 Centennial Mall in the lower level conference room. Testimony is limited to 5 minutes per person. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The hearing officer is there to take testimony and will not answer questions on the protocol," said Dawn-Renee Smith, Department of Correctional Services communications director. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Corrections Director Scott Frakes said he would keep an open mind about any comments or testimony received by the department on the proposed protocol. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As it is proposed, it allows for the department to change the lethal injection drugs for an execution based on availability, and to notify the condemned inmate of the drug(s) to be used and the order they will be administered, if more than one, 60 days before a death warrant is requested from the Nebraska Supreme Court. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">They may be directly purchased or obtained through the Department of Pharmacy or any other "appropriate source," including a compounding pharmacist or chemist. A chemical analysis will verify the substance, according to the protocol. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The director may authorize any records or information identifying a person, company or entity supplying the drugs to be confidential.</div><br />Source: <a href="http://journalstar.com/legislature/death-penalty-protocol-hearing-will-be-friday/article_96a4e187-4634-5906-98f1-0156b1c83454.html" target="_blank">Lincoln Journal Star</a>, Joane Young, December 29, 2016<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! <a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JBVXEBZLP3WKW" target="_blank">DONATE!</a></b></div><form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_blank"><div style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/fr_FR/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" /></div></form><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div>

Nebraska: Hearing on controversial lethal injection protocol proposal

Nebraska's death chamber A state hearing on a controversial lethal injection protocol proposal will begin at 9 a.m. Friday at the State ...

Read more »

U.S.: The Continuing Collapse of the Death Penalty

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXw7H4WU4CaLY3ClKnIGDkZPeAejcd3woNC1kiZBwV8I9xau5i5dC_8VvHiaRXF9nlNOhSgxRd-Dfzn-fB8jcpGBubLKbq3brF_hDD18XJ6wK95vkoI8ZoDxHYzp4lbJchlMWDPiFPE94/s1600/Oklahoma+death+chamber.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="Oklahoma's death chamber" border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXw7H4WU4CaLY3ClKnIGDkZPeAejcd3woNC1kiZBwV8I9xau5i5dC_8VvHiaRXF9nlNOhSgxRd-Dfzn-fB8jcpGBubLKbq3brF_hDD18XJ6wK95vkoI8ZoDxHYzp4lbJchlMWDPiFPE94/s400/Oklahoma+death+chamber.jpg" title="Oklahoma's death chamber" width="400" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Piece by piece, the death penalty continues to fall apart. Last week, the Florida Supreme Court <a href="http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/breaking-news/os-florida-death-penalty-asay-20161222-story.html" target="_blank">invalidated</a> between 150 and 200 death sentences — nearly half of all those in the state — because they were imposed under a law the United States Supreme Court <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/opinion/floridas-death-machine-loses-again.html" target="_blank">struck down as unconstitutional</a> in January. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The law, which required judges and not juries to make the factual findings necessary to sentence someone to die, violated the Sixth Amendment’s guarantee of a jury trial. “A jury’s mere recommendation is not enough,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for an 8-to-1 majority.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The Florida <a href="http://www.floridasupremecourt.org/decisions/2016/sc14-436.pdf" target="_blank">decision</a> is the most recent sign, in a year full of them, that the morally abhorrent practice of capital punishment is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/21/us/death-penalty-capital-punishment.html?_r=0" target="_blank">sliding into the dustbin</a> of American history — where it should have been long ago.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Juries around the country imposed 30 death sentences in 2016, a 40 percent drop from last year and fewer than at any time since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, according to a <a href="http://deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/2016YrEnd.pdf" target="_blank">report</a> by the Death Penalty Information Center, a research group that opposes capital punishment. Twenty people were executed this year, the lowest number in a quarter-century.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The practice is not only increasingly rare, it is concentrated in an extremely narrow slice of the country. Only five states carried out executions in 2016, the report found, and only five imposed more than one death sentence. California sentenced nine people to die, the most of any state, but no one has been put to death there since 2006.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Public support for the death penalty keeps dropping, too — <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/29/support-for-death-penalty-lowest-in-more-than-four-decades/" target="_blank">falling below 50 percent</a> for the first time in more than four decades, according to a Pew Research survey. Support falls even further when respondents are given the alternative of a long prison term like life without parole. Though voters in California, Nebraska and Oklahoma last month <a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2016/11/09/the-death-penalty-is-alive-and-well?ref=hp-4-121#.GEv5BuAM2" target="_blank">preserved</a> the death penalty, the overall trend is toward growing discomfort with state-sanctioned killing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The total abolition of capital punishment, however, will depend on the Supreme Court’s reading of the Eighth Amendment’s ban on <a href="https://constitutioncenter.org/interactive-constitution/amendments/amendment-viii" target="_blank">cruel and unusual punishments</a>. So far, only one current member of the court, Justice Stephen Breyer, a <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/06/supreme-court-justice-stephen-breyer-death-penalty-may-be-unconstitutional-119547" target="_blank">regular critic</a> of the death penalty, has expressed openness to examining this question. This month Justice Breyer <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/us/politics/justice-stephen-breyer-death-penalty-supreme-court.html" target="_blank">took aim</a> at the practice again, in a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/16pdf/16-5247_q713.pdf" target="_blank">dissent</a> from the court’s decision not to hear an appeal from a death-row inmate in Florida.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Pointing to the facts of several recent cases that had come before the court, Justice Breyer asked whether the death penalty itself — plagued by arbitrariness, racism, decades-long delays and faulty execution-drug protocols — violates the Eighth Amendment. The people who end up being executed, he wrote, “are not the ‘worst of the worst,’ but, rather, are individuals chosen at random, on the basis, perhaps of geography, perhaps of the views of individual prosecutors, or still worse on the basis of race.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Meanwhile the court is making matters worse with its <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/us/politics/the-lethal-gaps-in-how-the-supreme-court-handles-the-death-penalty.html">erratic </a><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/12/us/politics/the-lethal-gaps-in-how-the-supreme-court-handles-the-death-penalty.html" target="_blank">decisions</a> in recent last-minute death-penalty appeals. Who lives and who dies is arbitrary.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Justice Breyer is asking the right questions. It is up to a majority of his colleagues to listen closely and bring the only just result: the permanent abolition of capital punishment in America.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Source: <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/26/opinion/the-continuing-collapse-of-the-death-penalty.html" target="_blank">The New York Times</a>, The Editorial Board, December 26, 2016</div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! <a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JBVXEBZLP3WKW" target="_blank">DONATE!</a></b></div><form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_blank"><div style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/fr_FR/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" /></div></form><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div>

U.S.: The Continuing Collapse of the Death Penalty

Piece by piece, the death penalty continues to fall apart. Last week, the Florida Supreme Court invalidated between 150 and 200 death sente...

Read more »

US capital punishment fall to 40-year low in 2016

<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkBu3-pmv1QknN8Gd_H9VQIr3726mikiS-OEZcOvhZm_oOxE16L-gYbwRdNrWCL8u_CyeolNlwykgiiV9BVyeaiUDvDPQf0WlY6baTOgppYaxivgX5cSlESRPWGBTDhHnTkNAE1U398a8-/s1600/21st+century.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="326" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkBu3-pmv1QknN8Gd_H9VQIr3726mikiS-OEZcOvhZm_oOxE16L-gYbwRdNrWCL8u_CyeolNlwykgiiV9BVyeaiUDvDPQf0WlY6baTOgppYaxivgX5cSlESRPWGBTDhHnTkNAE1U398a8-/s400/21st+century.gif" width="400" /></a></div><b>Fewer death sentences were handed down in the US this year than at any time in the last four decades, a study finds.</b></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Only 30 such penalties were imposed in 2016, the lowest since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976 after a four-year hiatus.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Five states, Georgia, Texas, Alabama, Florida and Missouri, carried out 20 executions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It continues a 20-year downward trend in US capital punishment, says the Death Penalty Information Center.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The new <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/" target="_blank">DPIC report</a> showed that not only have executions slowed or even halted in the vast majority of states, but juries and judges are sentencing fewer people to death.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"This year, death sentences will be lower than at any other time in the modern history of the American death penalty," says Robert Dunham, executive director of the DPIC and lead author of the study. "That, I think, is a big story."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">After the US death penalty was reinstated 40 years ago, the number of death sentences and executions began steadily rising.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 1977, 137 death sentences were handed down.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The trend peaked in the 1990s, with 98 executions in 1999 and 315 new death sentences in 1996.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Then the downward trend began.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 2016, only 30 new death sentences were handed down, and 20 executions took place.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">That was the fewest number of executions since 1991.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Of the five states that put inmates to death in 2016, Georgia led the way with nine executions, followed by Texas with seven, Alabama with two, and both Florida and Missouri executed one person.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">New death sentences are down 37% from 2015, according to the report, and fewer death sentences were imposed in 2016 "than in any other year since the Supreme Court declared US death penalty statutes unconstitutional in... 1972".</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr Dunham points out that the low number of new death sentences was notable as well.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Georgia, for example, sentenced no-one to death in 2016.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Texas had four new death sentences, which is very low for the state," he said.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Dallas and Harris counties, which is where Houston and Dallas are, imposed no new death sentences for only the second time since the 1980s."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The halt of executions in some states can be explained by the difficulty procuring legally acceptable <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36292193" target="_blank">drugs needed for lethal injections in the US</a>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Many pharmaceutical companies refuse to provide them, and the European Union banned the export of the drugs to the US in 2011.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Some states have resorted to clandestine deals with compounding pharmacies or different drug cocktails, and a series of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-27215508" target="_blank">botched executions</a> in recent years has raised legal and ethical concerns about these practices.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0FjVeBIOCT0IeRv_uebT-eiYv2P42FwBBXWfUeMy8YSLHLDLtBOUhkvPcYTzYfr0Q5ahR_lMvra7hNAhbOPm07AeUS2T6PRe2daWyfcH-CncI6zEWwATiHc7_ZsHeTBeizEplZ9fOpbLS/s1600/break.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="275" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0FjVeBIOCT0IeRv_uebT-eiYv2P42FwBBXWfUeMy8YSLHLDLtBOUhkvPcYTzYfr0Q5ahR_lMvra7hNAhbOPm07AeUS2T6PRe2daWyfcH-CncI6zEWwATiHc7_ZsHeTBeizEplZ9fOpbLS/s400/break.gif" width="400" /></a></div>Legal challenges that can take decades to resolve and exonerations around the country have also slowed executions.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So far there have been 156 men and women exonerated from death row in the US.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"Lawyers cost an awful lot more than prison guards, and there is just enough ambivalence for state killing as a criminal punishment to make the due process standard higher than for other kinds of punishment," says Frank Zimring, a death penalty expert and professor at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The combination of high expense and low assurance has sort of taken the enthusiasm out."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">According to various polls, American opinions are roughly split when it comes to the death penalty.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">A <a href="http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/09/29/support-for-death-penalty-lowest-in-more-than-four-decades/" target="_blank">Pew Research Center poll</a> shows approval for the death penalty has declined from a high of 80% in the 1990s to only 49% in favour now.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">However, Robert Blecker, a death penalty supporter and professor at New York Law School, says that the majority of Americans still favour the use of capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"[Approval may be] down from an all-time high of 80%, but it's also up from the 1968 low," he says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"California supported it, Oklahoma put it in its constitution, and Nebraska reversed its own legislature.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"How much clearer evidence could you possibly want as to where American public opinion is?"</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">During this year's election season, three US states had items related to capital punishment on their ballots, and in all three states, death penalty proponents won big on election night.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nebraskans voted to bring their death penalty back after legislators <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-32910693" target="_blank">banned the practice</a> in 2015.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Californians voted to speed up their executions rather than abolish them.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In Oklahoma, voters approved new constitutional language to protect the use of capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Mr Zimring concedes that the general public may not necessarily approve of the precipitous decline in the use of capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But he points out that when other nations abolished their death penalty it took some time for the general public to concur.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"When you study the western European decline of the death penalty, it turns out that public support for hanging people persists for almost 20 years after moral leadership abolishes the death penalty," he says.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"It takes a long time for public passions to catch up with the moral leadership of elites."</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Although this year's figures continue to bolster the narrative that the American criminal justice system is increasingly turning away from the death penalty, the end of capital punishment may still be a long way off.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"The end game is going to be long and expensive and in a deep way, unnecessary," says Mr Zimring.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">"That's billions of dollars and many too many executions in the American future."</div><br />Source: <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38371479" target="_blank">BBC News</a>, Jessica Lussenhop, December 21, 2016<br /><br /><br /><h2>The Strange Case of the American Death Penalty</h2><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKwTmZcrR1QcpiLUbkxn6Jp_cHISVJuD2c8si4LKlVMC2Q_LQ79SVx2JJsdWv3QutacI-AciHorJQrt7FeW5EhT8Zw4CPG8Sq0_FEcBQLCQNXsUK_9gvhjg3aZSXbE7Kr7XXeaijeJF4dK/s1600/k5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKwTmZcrR1QcpiLUbkxn6Jp_cHISVJuD2c8si4LKlVMC2Q_LQ79SVx2JJsdWv3QutacI-AciHorJQrt7FeW5EhT8Zw4CPG8Sq0_FEcBQLCQNXsUK_9gvhjg3aZSXbE7Kr7XXeaijeJF4dK/s400/k5.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>It’s a paradoxical moment in the history of the death penalty in the United States. The number of executions has dwindled to just a few, but the voters, even in the most liberal states, seem to want the punishment to remain on the books. That’s the message of the <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/" target="_blank">annual report</a> from the Death Penalty Information Center, which produces the most comprehensive analysis of the subject each year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The headline on the report—“Another Record Decline in Death Penalty Use”—notes that the remarkable fall in the number of executions and death sentences is part of a longer trend, one that continued this year. The numbers were the lowest in the modern era of the American death penalty, after a period, between 1972 and 1976, when the Supreme Court put a stop to executions. There were just twenty executions in the United States in 2016, down from a peak of ninety-eight, in 1999. Even more remarkable, just thirty people were sentenced to death this year, compared with three hundred and fifteen in 1996. Indeed, as the report further notes, “Fewer new death sentences were imposed in the past decade than in the decade preceding the Supreme Court’s invalidation of capital punishment in 1972.” The reduction in death sentences means that the decline in executions is likely to continue as well, because the pipeline of new cases is not as full.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Despite these numbers, death-penalty abolitionists also received a host of bad news this year. In 2015, after a long political struggle, the Nebraska state legislature (which is unicameral) repealed the death penalty. But supporters of capital punishment put the issue on the ballot in the 2016 election, and more than sixty per cent of the voters supported its restoration. Voters in California were asked to address two contradictory initiatives concerning the death penalty. One would have ended executions in the state once and for all; the other sought to remove some of the legal barriers that have prevented executions from proceeding quickly, or really at all, in the state. The abolition initiative failed, with fifty-three per cent of the voters opposed, and the law for expediting the death penalty passed, with slightly more than fifty-one per cent of the vote. (It’s not clear what, if any, practical difference passage of the initiative will mean. The legal standoffs in California are likely to continue. There are <a href="http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/state_by_state" target="_blank">seven hundred and forty-one</a> people on death row in the state, but there hasn’t been an execution there since 2006.)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The debate over the death penalty seems to have taken on some of the characteristics of the Presidential race this year, as a contest between populists and élitists. Judges play the part of the élites in this particular debate, and the judiciary, as a whole, has shown ever-greater hostility toward approving executions. This year, the Supreme Court ruled for prisoners in several high-profile death-penalty decisions, holding that racial bias infected jury selection, in Foster v. Chatman, a case from Georgia, and rejecting Florida’s system of allowing judges to impose the death penalty even when jurors support life in prison, in Hurst v. Florida. (The Florida legislature sought to correct the defects identified by the Supreme Court in the Hurst case, only to have the Florida Supreme Court overrule the new law as well.) Delaware’s Supreme Court also nullified its state’s death-penalty law this year.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqOe-7Oh76c4SgqTgbQPvj9WuZvXdUNsVzT21T8yBzDqmoborj19YG7Orkhyphenhyphen0OskknQx8gVCBIh7VhTeBimD1pCwnaIPnruBRS4-MtZ-ySFncOH6CFrCpLMuzLVQgxXEINFTxNf9eu3Fg/s1600/right+trick.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="321" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqOe-7Oh76c4SgqTgbQPvj9WuZvXdUNsVzT21T8yBzDqmoborj19YG7Orkhyphenhyphen0OskknQx8gVCBIh7VhTeBimD1pCwnaIPnruBRS4-MtZ-ySFncOH6CFrCpLMuzLVQgxXEINFTxNf9eu3Fg/s400/right+trick.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>But, as the election results in California and Nebraska illustrate, the voters—the populists—continue to back the death penalty, as does the President-elect. (Donald Trump notoriously called for the execution of the <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/amy-davidson/donald-trump-and-the-central-park-five" target="_blank">Central Park Five</a>, fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-olds who were charged with a high-profile rape and beating, in 1989. Even though the five were later exonerated, Trump, during this year’s campaign, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/opinion/why-trump-doubled-down-on-the-central-park-five.html" target="_blank">reiterated his belief in their guilt</a>.) The Death Penalty Information Center report notes that public-opinion polls show some decline in support for the death penalty, but the opposition has never achieved close to a majority. And, notwithstanding ambiguous poll numbers, politicians from Trump to Barack Obama understand that support for the death penalty, at least in some form, is less politically risky than opposition to it. (Obama, for example, has supported executions for “extraordinarily heinous crimes.”) Trump’s victory, and those of other Republicans, can only reinforce that view.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Many factors have led to the decline in the death penalty in recent years: less crime over all, with less fear among the public as a result; DNA exonerations leading jurors to pause before imposing death; the reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to provide lethal-injection drugs and the resulting search (still under way) for a drug protocol that passes constitutional muster; the length and expense of the appeals mandated by the Supreme Court. All those reasons for the decline remain, but so, too, does the United States remain a country that has had the death penalty in effect for virtually all of its history. That’s not likely to change, either. The death penalty may keep shrinking, but it will probably never entirely go away.</div><br />Source: <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-strange-case-of-the-american-death-penalty" target="_blank">The New Yorker</a>, Jeffrey Toobin, December 21, 2016<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! <a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JBVXEBZLP3WKW" target="_blank">DONATE!</a></b></div><form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_blank"><div style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/fr_FR/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" /></div></form><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div>

US capital punishment fall to 40-year low in 2016

Fewer death sentences were handed down in the US this year than at any time in the last four decades, a study finds. Only 30 such penalties ...

Read more »

Nebraska prisons chief gets new license for death penalty drugs, with 'no immediate plans' to use it

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnAh4PRMLVNVUqLZN65-ItpMTZUcPfRRvbsE61WhDEKPByTFMNJf84HU0AByW-N8ARKz7BjrDRPtYkjE03MWTTQ5ysKwyhxfmeTDUyBTwAE9-qPoGPmZyVetVwvgy8me2pPKFGSZQ7zWg/s1600/Nebraska+death+chamber.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="Nebraska's death chamber" border="0" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnAh4PRMLVNVUqLZN65-ItpMTZUcPfRRvbsE61WhDEKPByTFMNJf84HU0AByW-N8ARKz7BjrDRPtYkjE03MWTTQ5ysKwyhxfmeTDUyBTwAE9-qPoGPmZyVetVwvgy8me2pPKFGSZQ7zWg/s400/Nebraska+death+chamber.jpg" title="Nebraska's death chamber" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nebraska's death chamber</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">LINCOLN — Nebraska’s top prison official has obtained a new license to import foreign-made death penalty drugs but so far has taken no steps to use it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The federal Drug Enforcement Administration issued the importer’s license to Scott Frakes, director of the State Department of Correctional Services, about two weeks after the Nov. 8 vote that reinstated the death penalty in Nebraska.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Frakes submitted the application Sept. 22, according to documents obtained this week by The World-Herald through an open records request.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“No new effort has been made to import lethal-injection drugs,” said Dawn-Renee Smith, spokeswoman for the Corrections Department, in response to follow-up questions. “There are no immediate plans to utilize the (importer’s) license. The license was renewed in the normal course of business.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The detail comes about two weeks after the department proposed changes in how it carries out lethal injections. Among other things, the department wants to hide the identity of its drug supplier and allow the director to choose what drug or combination of drugs to use.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Smith said corrections officials are focused on the lethal injection protocol changes, which will be the topic of a Dec. 30 public hearing in Lincoln.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 2015 the Legislature repealed the death penalty over the veto of Gov. Pete Ricketts. But last month, 61 percent of voters overturned the repeal and reinstated capital punishment.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Ricketts has said he will make every effort to carry out the will of the majority and proceed with the executions of the 10 men on Nebraska’s death row.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Although state officials have been vague about how they intend to obtain the drugs, the protocol changes seem designed to go through a domestic supplier, most likely an independent compounding pharmacy. Maintaining a valid importer’s license, however, would give prison officials another option.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Nebraska’s current lethal injection protocol requires the use of three drugs in a prescribed sequence. State officials have twice imported drugs from India, but the supplies expired before they could be used.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In 2015 Ricketts announced that the Corrections Department had purchased two of the drugs through the same broker in India. But the state’s attempt to import was thwarted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, which said one of the drugs is no longer permitted for use in this country.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The broker, Chris Harris, has refused a demand for a refund. The Corrections Department has not taken additional steps to acquire the drugs it paid Harris to deliver, Smith said Thursday.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Danielle Conrad, executive director of the ACLU of Nebraska, has been a critic of the plan to shroud parts of the death penalty protocol in secrecy. She said the state’s acquisition of a new importer’s license prompts more questions than answers.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“The bottom line is this department and this process requires more, not less, transparency to ensure the constitutional rights of all are respected and that Nebraska’s long tradition of open government remains,” Conrad said.</div><br />Source: <a href="http://www.omaha.com/news/metro/nebraska-prisons-chief-gets-new-license-for-death-penalty-drugs/article_b0ccf77a-63e4-5472-bba6-b62b49f39e8e.html" target="_blank">Omaha World-Herald</a>, Joe Duggan, December 15, 2016<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">⚑ | Report an error, an omission; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: <a href="mailto:deathpenaltynews@gmail.com">deathpenaltynews@gmail.com</a>.</div><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="4" style="background-color: white; border-collapse: collapse; border: 0px solid rgb(255, 204, 0); color: black; text-align: center; width: 100%;"><tbody><tr> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><a href="https://www.facebook.com/WebDPN/" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4sspwgGptzvuHVklum5TwxKppRN-lIC5TN8RLZFq_B4ZOtBrX1ssXPNKQ6XpSyQFRJRtVQN45HMkpt3VX0JtOW0TovwxZAurG-AV6gh98IAXo7Ip6QlpkZr9WrM3_m943Mwy-gGxBAY/s1600/Find+us+Facebook.jpg" /></a></div></td> <td><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://twitter.com/WebDPN" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiULIPEaT_P6oIauxAZd17XRRxljesDLS7iIjdQXT7Xct99uHeohx4IYmiAB6S044gTjMDGSy50sL2vDzOyPZ-3vJj9zwcYQ2rgzJh9v1-QDiunKAQtLLLqJ83s38qN3HABxGIC8GsIOD0/s1600/Find+us+twitter.jpg" /></a><span id="goog_1427852018"></span><span id="goog_1427852019"></span><a href="https://www.blogger.com/"></a></div></td> </tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /><b>Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! <a href="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JBVXEBZLP3WKW" target="_blank">DONATE!</a></b></div><form action="https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr" method="post" target="_blank"><div style="text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" height="1" src="https://www.paypalobjects.com/fr_FR/i/scr/pixel.gif" width="1" /></div></form><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div>

Nebraska prisons chief gets new license for death penalty drugs, with 'no immediate plans' to use it

Nebraska's death chamber LINCOLN — Nebraska’s top prison official has obtained a new license to import foreign-made death penalty drugs ...

Read more »