Death Penalty
Death Penalty Moratorium Could Be Wishful Thinking
Posted Oct 19, 2007, 12:23 pm CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss
Assertions that the nation’s courts have placed a moratorium on the death penalty may be premature.
The U.S. Supreme Court accepted a case last month challenging Kentucky’s use of lethal injection. Since then it has granted two stays of execution and refused to vacate a third. Several state courts have also granted stays.
Some death penalty opponents interpret the developments as a de facto moratorium, the New York Times reports. But Justice Antonin Scalia doesn’t see it that way. On Tuesday he dissented from the court’s refusal to vacate a stay in an Arkansas case brought by an inmate who raised the lethal injection issue nine years after his conviction became final. Scalia complained that the appeals court that granted the stay appeared to be operating on a “mistaken premise” that it was required.
Death penalty expert Elisabeth Semel also is reluctant to pronounce a de facto ban on executions.
“It would be inaccurate and very presumptuous to call this a moratorium,” she told the Times. “What we’re seeing is a combination of different courts, and different executives, deciding to be prudent” while waiting for the Supreme Court to rule.