Steve Neavling ticklethewire.com Edison Burgos Montes escaped the death penalty but faces life in prison in the killing of an DEA informant, a Puerto Rican jury decided Thursday, the Associated Press reports. Montes was convicted in August of killing his girlfriend, Madelyn Semidey Morales, in July 2005. She was cooperating with a DEA probe against…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com A Brooklyn fed judge is none too happy with the Justice Department and Atty. Gen. Eric Holder Jr. in a case involving the murder of two New York police detectives, the NY Daily News reported. U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis “bristled” on Tuesday when expressing his displeasure that the Justice Department…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Going for the federal death penalty is one thing. Putting a federal inmate to death is another. Since the reinstatement of the federal death penalty in 1988, three federal inmates have actually been executed and 60 are sitting on death row, according to Death Penalty Information Center. The last inmate to…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Citing mentally disabled issues, a federal judge in Cleveland has taken the death penalty off the table in an upcoming trial of a man accused in the arson death of eight children and one adult, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver Jr. ruled last week that a…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com WASHINGTON — Retired Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens has finally explained his opposition to the death penalty, “saying personnel changes on the court, coupled with ‘regrettable judicial activism,’had created a system of capital punishment that is shot through with racism, skewed toward conviction, infected with politics and tinged with hysteria,”…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com Attorneys for four current and ex-cops charged in the civilian Post-Katrina shootings on the Danziger Bridge will try and dissuade the Justice Department from seeking the death penalty, the New Orleans Times-Picayune reported. The paper reports that attorneys are scheduled to meet with Justice Department officials Tuesday to discuss the matter….
By Glynnesha Taylor ticklethewire.com Federal prosecutors in Ohio are taking the unusual step and seeking the federal death penalty against a convicted drug dealer accused of setting off one of the deadliest fires in Cleveland’s history, according to the Associated Press. Federal authorities are taking aim at Antun Lewis, 26, who is accused of breaking…
By Allan Lengel For AOL News One of the last three people executed in a federal case in this country was Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, who died by lethal injection on June 11, 2001. To say the least, putting convicted criminals to death in federal cases is not all that common, particularly when compared…
