No closer after nearly two decades to mounting a trial against accused 9/11 plotter Ammar al-Baluchi, prosecutors told a federal judge Wednesday that the record of torture in the case has no bearing on whether they can seek the death penalty.
Read moreA narrow Supreme Court majority ordered new proceedings Wednesday in the case of an Alabama man with dementia who no longer remembers committing the murder that landed him on death row.
Read more(CN) – Finding against Indiana’s seizure of a convicted drug dealer’s Land Rover, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously Wednesday that
Read moreThe Ninth Circuit affirmed in part and reversed and remanded in part a civil rights class action alleging cruel and unusual punishment in Arizona prisons through violations of a settlement intended to address inadequate health care.
Read moreDeclining public support for the death penalty and reduced rates of executions indicate there is a “climate change” involving capital punishment, which could lead to an abolition of the practice in the United States, the director of the Death Penalty Information Center said in an interview, touting the release Friday of his group’s annual year-end report.
Read moreA class of former and current juvenile inmates housed with adults who say they are exposed to an increased risk of sexual and physical assaults argued before the Sixth Circuit on Thursday to revive their civil rights claims.
Read moreThe Supreme Court appeared eager Wednesday to make states comply with the constitutional bar against excessive fines, with some justices casting the decision as all but inevitable.
Read moreAttorneys for 27 inmates on death row told the Tennessee Supreme Court on Wednesday there are better, and constitutional, ways to kill their clients than the three-drug lethal-injection protocol the state has adopted.
Read moreDenial of methadone to prison inmates with opioid addictions constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, the ACLU claimed in federal court Wednesday.
Read moreThe 10th Circuit affirmed summary judgment of qualified immunity for Kansas prison officials who kept Richard Grissom in solitary confinement for nearly 20 years, “because at the time of Grissom’s confinement there was no clearly established law that would have alerted them that his asserted constitutional rights were being violated.”
Read moreIn a case involving Indiana’s forfeiture of a Land Rover used to move drugs, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether the Eighth Amendment’s ban on excessive fines applies to state governments.
Read moreA man with mental problems who spent nearly his entire 13 months in solitary confinement filed a federal class action against Chelan County, Washington, and top officials, claiming their treatment of troubled inmates violates the Eight Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
Read moreThe Utah Department of Corrections and Daggett County inflict “unbelievably inhumane conduct” upon prisoners at Daggett County Jail, including stun guns, choking and mauling by dogs, former inmates claim in federal court.
Read moreQuoting 19th century French literary criticism, Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke out Monday after the Supreme Court rejected appeals by two men on death row in Florida.
Read moreJustice Sonia Sotomayor flagged “serious constitutional concerns” Monday with a Ohio law that appears to block the courts from evaluating life sentences that offer no possibility of parole.
Read moreUtah State Prison officials did not violate the constitutional rights of prisoners by dropping tear gas that vented into the cellblock, a 10th Circuit panel ruled Friday.
Read moreA federal judge ruled Thursday that Houston can start enforcing a law that bans camping in public, which critics say criminalizes homelessness, finding that it applies equally to anyone sleeping in a tent on the street.
Read moreThree liberal justices dissented Monday from the U.S. Supreme Court’s rejection of a challenge to Florida’s death-sentencing procedures, saying the high court should have decided whether jurors being told their verdict was merely advisory diminished their sense of responsibility.
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A Ninth Circuit panel on Tuesday revived claims brought by a former Hawaii inmate who says she was psychologically traumatized by forced sexual-shame therapy at a Hawaii correctional facility.
Read moreA new report finds that most, if not all, of the 26 Ohio prisoners scheduled to be executed over the next three years have significant impairments that limit their legal culpability and may preclude them from execution under the Eighth Amendment.
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