This week saw several interesting developments at the United States Supreme Court, plus the videotaped arrest of a public defender in the hallway of a courthouse. Supreme Court takes up another method-of-execution case. As the USA Today discusses here, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case from Oklahoma challenging the use of the sedative midazolam as an ingredient in the cocktail of drugs used in executions. Four death row inmates were plaintiffs, but one was just executed, leaving three more to carry the case forward. States have started using a wide variety of drugs for lethal injection, so it strikes me as unlikely that the decision in this case will resolve most method-of-execution claims one way or the other. Supreme Court’s Miller retroactivity case disappears. As one case joins the Court’s docket, another falls away. The Court had agreed to review a New Orleans case that presented the issue of whether Miller v. Alabama (no automatic LWOP for juvenile murderers) applies retroactively. But a local innocence project and the prosecutor’s office have allowed the petitioner in that case to re-plead to lesser charges, resulting in his release and mooting the case. It’s probably too late for the Court to pick another Miller retroactivity case this Term, but I imagine that the matter will crop up again next Term. Sledge exonerated. As noted in last week’s roundup, there was a hearing last Friday regarding the innocence claim of Joseph Sledge, convicted four decades ago of a double murder during a [...]
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