Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island took a principled position when he refused an order from a federal court to transfer a prisoner to federal custody for prosecution because that would expose the prisoner to the death penalty. As Mr. Chafee said in a statement, that is “a penalty consciously rejected by the State of Rhode Island, even for those guilty of the most heinous crimes.”
NEW RESOURCES: Bureau of Justice Statistics Releases "Capital Punishment, 2010"
On December 20, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released its annual set of statistical tables on the death penalty in the United States, covering information for 2010. Hightlights from the report include:
In 2006, a federal district court ordered California to stop executing people because the state’s three-drug protocol for lethal injection lacked “reliability.” Six of the 11 men executed by lethal injection in the state since 1978 may have suffered cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution because the injection inflicted “excessive pain,” Judge Jeremy Fogel found. He said the state could cure the constitutional problem by being transparent in devising a new protocol and using a one-drug, anesthetic-only method (as Ohio and Washington do).
Brussels, 20 December 2011 - The European Commission decided today to extend the list of goods subject to export controls, to prevent their use for capital punishment, torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. As of today, trade of certain anaesthetics, such as sodium thiopental, which can be used in lethal injections, to countries that have not yet abolished the death penalty, will be tightly controlled. Furthermore, the scope of the EU regulation has been enlarged to include other products such as spike batons that previously were not prohibited.
