In Mississippi, Richard Jordan, a 79-year-old Vietnam vet, sentenced to death in 1977 for the kidnapping and murder of Edwina Marter in 1976, was executed on Wednesday by lethal injection. Jordan had been on death row for 48 years — longer than any other person in the state’s history, the Clarion Ledger reported.
In Minnesota, the Hennepin County prosecutor said he would pursue first-degree murder charges against Vance Boelter, the suspect in the murder of state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, as well as the shooting of state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, the Minnesota Reformer reported. Minnesota abolished its death penalty in 1911, but the U.S. Attorney’s office also brought federal charges against Boelter, making him eligible for the death penalty. The shootings occurred on June 14. Both Hoffmans survived but were seriously injured. Boelter is a self-proclaimed Christian who allegedly opposes abortion and LGBTQ rights. He also faces six federal offenses, according to the Reformer.
In Ohio earlier this month, Gov. Mike DeWine again rescheduled execution dates because of the state’s inability to choose a replacement method of execution, since DeWine declared that lethal injection is not an option because of its unavailability, cleveland.com reported. Three men, Timothy Coleman, Kareem Jackson, and Quisi Bryan, had their executions moved to 2028, according to Cleveland.com. There are currently 113 people on the state’s death row. Its last execution was in 2018.
In Indiana, Gov. Mike Braun announced earlier this month that the state has run out of its supply of lethal injection drugs, the Indiana Capital Chronicle reports. The Chronicle discovered recently that the state had spent $900 thousand on pentobarbital last year, but didn’t disclose the amount purchased and “refused to provide information on expiration dates, storage or other details.” Indiana executed two people in the last six months, the first executions since 2009. Braun said there are no plans to buy more lethal drugs and said state lawmakers should begin discussing if it’s time to abolish the death penalty in Indiana, according to the Chronicle.
In Delaware, the House took a major step toward adding its ban on the death penalty to the state constitution this week, by passing HB 34, Coast TV reported. HB 35, which “would embed the death penalty ban directly into the Delaware Constitution, insulating it from reversal by court rulings or future legislative changes,” will be voted on by the state Senate next week. It will then have to pass again with a two-thirds majority vote in both chambers, according to Coast TV.
In Texas, Scott Panetti, whose 2007 case before the U.S. Supreme Court, Panetti v. Quarterman, “was a landmark decision in the history of the death penalty and in the development of legal protections for criminally-convicted people with mental illness,” according to Texas Defender Service https://www.texasdefender.org/rest-in-peace-scott-panetti/, died late last month at a prison hospital in Galveston. He was 67. Panetti, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, was convicted of killing his wife’s parents in 1992 and sentenced to death in 1995 in Texas. He represented himself at his trial in 1995, dressed as a cowboy, and attempted to call as witnesses the Pope, Jesus Christ, and John F. Kennedy. He was found guilty and sentenced to death, but appealed his conviction based on his mental incompetence. He was granted stays of execution in 2004 and 2014, and in 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked his execution, saying a condemned inmate must have the mental capacity to know he is going to be executed and understand why. But, according to Texas Defender Service, even after the Supreme Court’s “groundbreaking decision,” Texas continued to try to execute Panetti, until 2022, when his lawyer, Gregory Wiercioch, and the Capital Habeas Unit for the Western District of Texas convinced a federal court that Panetti was not competent to be executed. He remained in prison, but “lived the final years of his life no longer under the threat of execution,” TDS stated.
Vietnam announced this week that it will remove eight crimes currently punishable by death. Offenses that are no longer death-eligible include embezzlement, vandalizing state property, manufacturing fake medicine, jeopardizing peace, triggering wars, espionage, and drug trafficking, Reuters reported. There are ten remaining capital offenses, including murder, treason, terrorism, and the sexual abuse of minors, according to Reuters.