Indiana executed Joseph Corcoran last month, the state’s first execution in 15 years. A lethal injection of pentobarbital killed the 49-year-old Corcoran, the first time the state has used a single-drug method, according https://tinyurl.com/53tyz79a to the Indiana Capital Chronicle. Corcoran was convicted and sentenced to death in 1999 for killing four people, including his brother, James Corcoran, Robert Scott Turner, Douglas Stillwell, and Timothy Bricker, in 1997.
In a per curiam opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to review the case of Brenda Andrew, the only woman on Oklahoma’s death row, to determine whether she was convicted after being sex-shamed by prosecutors, the Oklahoman reported https://tinyurl.com/yspw7kk9. “Here the Court found that admittedly irrelevant evidence of the Petitioner’s sex life and alleged failures as a mother and wife actually made the grade as a violation of Due Process,” stated DPF board member and criminal defense attorney Robert Sanger. The 61-year-old Andrew was sentenced to death in 2004 after being convicted of shooting her estranged husband, Rob Andrew, in 2001. Her lover and alleged accomplice, James Pavatt, was convicted and sentenced to death in a separate murder trial and is awaiting execution, according to the Oklahoman.
In Florida, James Ford is scheduled to be killed on February 13. Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty reports https://www.fadp.org/update-on-james-ford-execution/ that the 64-year-old Ford has been on death row for more than 25 years. He was sentenced to death by a non-unanimous jury (11 – 1), and he missed the deadline for getting his death sentence overturned – after the U.S. Supreme Court declared Florida’s death penalty scheme unlawful – by just 27 days. As is all too often the case for those in prison, Ford’s childhood was marked by neglect and trauma.
In Arizona, the state Supreme Court denied a request by Aaron Gunches to be executed by lethal injection on Valentine’s Day, the Arizona Daily Star reports https://tinyurl.com/37k4fp4m . Gunches pleaded guilty 20 years ago to killing his girlfriend’s ex-husband, Ted Price, and has repeatedly expressed his wish to be killed by the state. The Court wanted to hear arguments from all parties involved in Gunches’ case. Still, it denied an attempt by University of Richmond School of Law professor Corinna Lain to intercede as a witness on how lethal injection causes a “torturous” death. Lain’s book, Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection, to be released in April, reveals that “The story of lethal injection is a story of gross incompetence, law breaking, torturous deaths, and a stunning indifference to the way in which human beings die at the hands of the state.” The Court will meet again on February 11, and if satisfied that all issues have been resolved, a death warrant will be issued at that time, according to the Daily Star.
In Zimbabwe, President Emmerson Mnangagwa signed into law the Death Penalty Abolition Act late last month, just weeks after the country’s parliament voted to abolish the death penalty, the BBC reported https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8gqz7n559o The 60 people on death row will be resentenced.
According to the BBC, “Mnangagwa has been a long-standing critic of capital punishment, citing his own experience of being sentenced to death in the 1960s for blowing up a train during the guerrilla war for independence. His sentence was later commuted to 10 years in prison.”
Twenty-four countries in Africa have abolished capital punishment, according to Amnesty International.
