In Oklahoma, Michael Dewayne Smith was executed earlier this month. He was convicted of murdering Janet Moore, a 40-year-old mother, and Sharath Pulluru, a 24-year-old store clerk, in two separate events in February 2002, KOSU. This was Oklahoma’s first execution this year.
In Alabama, state officials are preparing to kill two more people, AL.com reports. The Supreme Court handed down a death warrant for Keith Gavin, on death row since 2000 for the 1998 murder of William Clayton, Jr., with no date yet set. And Jamie Ray Mills is scheduled to be executed at the end of May. He was convicted of three counts of murder for the killings of Floyd Hill and Vera Hill in 2004. Both men will be killed by lethal injection, not Alabama’s new method of nitrogen gas.
Also in Alabama, the House Judiciary Committee rejected a bill in a 9-4 vote that would have resentenced individuals sentenced to death despite a jury recommendation of life in prison to life without parole, Jurist reports. About 33 people on death row were sentenced to death under a previous system that allowed judicial override. However, in 2017, the state passed AB 16, a bill prohibiting judges from overriding jury sentences in capital cases. HB 27 would have allowed the individuals sentenced to be resentenced before AB 16 became law.
In Louisiana, a bill that would remove nitrogen gas as a method of execution advanced to a Senate committee last week, just a few months after lawmakers added it to its execution protocol, the Louisiana Illuminator reports. Louisiana’s execution methods also include lethal injection and electrocution.
In Georgia, 40-year-old Jeremy Williams was handed down four death sentences this month for the murder, rape, and brutalization. of five-year-old Kamarie Holland in December 2001, WRBL reports.
In California, a long-overdue monument to former Supreme Court Justice Rose Elizabeth will open to the public in Sacramento this month. In April 2023, lawmakers moved to honor Bird by passing Senate Concurrent Resolution 47 on a 10-2 vote. It designated the Plaza at the center of the Capitol World Peace Rose Garden as the Chief Justice Rose Elizabeth Bird Justice for all Plaza. Governor Jerry Brown appointed Bird as the first female Chief Justice in 1977. During her tenure, she was strongly opposed to the death penalty and joined with the majority in 61 cases to return death penalty convictions to the trial court for additional review. That unwavering opposition, however, was a significant factor in 1986, when Bird and Justices Cruz Reynoso and Joseph Grodin were denied new terms, thanks to an opposition campaign funded by businesses and agriculture organizations, according to Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Orinda) who sponsored SCR 47. The opposition’s slogan was “Cast Three Votes for the Death Penalty.”
Rose Bird died in December 1999 of breast cancer.
