In Louisiana earlier this week, a state legislative committee approved a proposal to add nitrogen gas and electrocution to its execution protocol, the Louisiana Illuminator reported. House Bill 6, sponsored by Republican Rep. Nicholas Muscarello, also shields execution records, including who provided the drugs. The bill stipulates that lethal injection will remain the state’s preferred method of killing. Electrocution was banned in Louisiana in 1991 and replaced by lethal injection. However, the state’s last execution was in 2010 because of an inability to obtain the drugs. HB 6 now goes to the House and Governmental Affairs Committee. There are 59 people on Louisiana’s death row.
In Idaho, the state Supreme Court denied a stay of execution and two appeals for Thomas Creech, who is scheduled to be killed next Wednesday, February 28, the East Idaho News reports. Creech, who has been on death row longer than any other person in the state, will be the first person executed in Idaho in almost 12 years. The ruling by the five-member court was unanimous. Creech’s lawyers argued he had received ineffective assistance of counsel and, in addition, he was sentenced by a judge rather than a jury, which is unconstitutional. According to the paper, the high court ruled against both appeals because they hadn’t been filed in a timely manner.
In South Carolina, the state Supreme Court heard arguments this month on the constitutionality of two of the state’s three methods of execution, WRDW reports. Lawyers for four people on death row who have exhausted their appeals maintain that the electric chair and firing squad are cruel and unusual punishments in violation of the Constitution. The third option, lethal injection, may be legal, they argued, but the state’s new shield law means the men can’t be sure the drugs haven’t expired or were responsibly manufactured, creating the risk of a botched procedure.
In Florida, a man who spent 37 years in prison for the 1983 rape and murder of a woman he didn’t commit was awarded a $14 million settlement last week, the New York Times reported. Fifty-nine-year-old Robert DuBoise was 18 when he was arrested for rape and murder of 19-year-old Barbara Grams in Tampa.. He was convicted after a one-week trial which included testimony from a jailhouse snitch and junk science evidence based on bite marks on the victim. He was sentenced to death but was resentenced three years later to life in prison. In August 2020, according to the Times, DuBoise was released after DNA evidence was discovered that exonerated him and implicated two other men.
Two of the 196 people who spent years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit before being exonerated died in January, the Death Penalty Information Center reports. Clifford Williams, Jr., who was wrongfully incarcerated for 42 years in Florida, died on January 11, less than five years after his release. Michael Graham, Jr., who spent 14 years on death row in Louisiana before being exonerated in 2000, died January 24. Neither man was compensated for the decades stolen from them, according to DPIC. “Their cases highlight the human costs of wrongful convictions and the challenges faced by exonerees,” DPIC stated.
