Some death row seniors committed crimes late in life, but many are there at such advanced age because of the inevitable slowness of the capital appeals process. Legal scholars have argued that executing people who have become so old is inconsistent with humanitarian values.
In , one year after executing year-old Thomas Arthur, Alabama executed year-old Walter Moody, the oldest person and only octogenarian put to death in the United States since executions resumed in That total was matched in the first six months of , with the executions of Billie Coble 70 , Donnie Johnson 68 , and Robert Long In 23 years of executions between and the close of the 20th century, only ten prisoners aged 60 or older were executed.
Forty-five prisoners aged 60 or older were executed between January and June , 23 since alone. With the aging of death row, states and courts are grappling with how issues of age-related physical and mental decline affect executions. In , a year-old man was put to death in Alabama for a murder he committed in Before his execution, J.
Hubbard forgot who he was at times because of dementia. He suffered from colon and prostate cancer, and he was so weak that other inmates sometimes walked him to the shower and combed his hair.
Washington Post, August 6, Ohio tried and failed to execute terminally ill year-old Alva Campbell pictured in November Campbell was afflicted with lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, respiratory failure, prostate cancer, and severe pneumonia; he relied on a colostomy bag, needed oxygen treatments four times a day, and required a walker for even limited mobility.
After failing four times to find a suitable vein in which to set an intravenous execution line, Ohio called off the execution. Governor John Kasich granted Campbell a temporary reprieve and rescheduled his execution for June Campbell died of his terminal illness less than six months later. The U. Supreme Court stayed the execution of year old Alabama prisoner Vernon Madison in based on concerns that he was incompetent to be executed.
Madison suffered multiple severe strokes that caused him brain damage, vascular dementia, and retrograde amnesia. The strokes also left him with slurred speech, legally blind, incontinent, and unable to walk independently.
In addition to having no memory of the offense, he can no longer recite the alphabet past the letter G, soils himself because he does not know there is a toilet in his cell, asks that his mother—who is dead—be informed of his strokes, and plans to move to Florida when he is out of jail.
Supreme Court ruled that cognitive issues associated with dementia could render a prisoner incompetent to be executed. A growing body of international case law suggests that extended confinement on death row under threat of execution constitutes cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment. In his dissenting statement in Elledge v.
Many states have adjusted their schedules in recent years, and the vast majority of U. Of the 34 states where the death penalty has been carried out since , 15 states still execute inmates in the middle of the night.
One of them is Tennessee, where double-murderer Steve Henley is to die by injection at 1 a. The late hour has some victims' advocates in the state upset. It just puts you completely off any routine. It's exhausting and really not necessary," said Verna Wyatt, executive director of You Have the Power, a Nashville-based crime victim advocacy group that has asked Tennessee corrections officials to give up midnight executions.
Inmates less likely to protest? Corrections officials in states that still schedule executions between midnight and 3 a. The state also has more time to fight late challenges. Those issues haven't greatly complicated daytime or evening executions, according to victims' advocates and states that prefer those times.
Even with no delays, this tended to see them not processed out the door until a few hours after midnight. There is also the issue of overtime. While ease of staffing is generally listed as a positive reason for late night executions, it turns out that as states began to move the executions into the light of day again, issues with the other inmates during daytime executions never really manifested, while overtime costs to keep the necessary staff on hand to process the execution at night were not trivial.
Some prisons have also taken to simply implementing special modified lockdown procedures during executions to free up normal staff while reducing the risk of issues with the rest of the inmates.
What about the potential paperwork problem? For example, in Missouri they just switched the time limit to 24 hours, regardless of date. What matters is just the starting time. Other states simply have moved to longer periods like a week or ten days granted for such a warrant.
Thus, contrary to what is often depicted in films, midnight executions have gone the way of the dodo in the United States, though there are a few places in the world that still prefer to execute people in darkness. For example, in India executions are typically carried out before sunrise, with the stated reasoning being staffing convenience- as was the case in the U. Your email address will not be published. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.
Why Were Executions Held at Midnight? April 15, Kathy Padden Leave a comment.
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