U.S. executions under renewed scrutiny
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The death penalty is under what may be an unprecedented review in the United States, mostly involving questions about lethal injection, by far the most common method of execution.
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A murderer was scheduled to die Thursday in what would be the nation's first execution since the day the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.
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The Supreme Court on Wednesday struggled to assess the morality and propriety of states&#39; executing murderers who killed at age 16 or 17 - the ultimate punishment carried out in few places outside the United States.
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SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota  - Just minutes before   prison officials had planned to serve death row inmate Elijah   Page his last meal, South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds delayed the   state's first execution in 59 years until at least next July.
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Texas remained the most active death penalty state in 2004 with 23 executions, down from a year ago and about average for the past decade. But legal experts and death penalty opponents suggest there are signs that increased judicial scrutiny is giving pause to juries and prosecutors considering capital punishment.
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Growing concerns about making sure the innocent aren't sentenced to death has caused more Americans to support a moratorium on the death penalty.
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It's not official, but a "creeping  moratorium" on the death penalty in the United States is taking  hold as the Supreme Court prepares to hear a challenge to the  method of lethal injection.
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Lethal injection, when used for the first time in Texas nearly 22 years ago, was touted as a more humane way to execute prisoners than the firing squad, hanging, the gas chamber or even the electric chair. Today, though, death penalty opponents are challenging that notion based on the Constitution's Eighth Amendment, which prohibits "cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
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MIAMI, Dec. 15 -- Executions by lethal injection were suspended in Florida and ordered revamped in California on Friday, as the chemical method once billed as a more humane way of killing the condemned came under mounting scrutiny over the pain it may cause.
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The US Supreme Court is to hear a challenge to lethal injections that has halted executions for months.
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Fewer prison inmates were moved to death row in 2005, according to a federal study that shows one more person was executed than in the year before.
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WASHINGTON - A divided Supreme Court on Wednesday weighed whether to ban the death penalty for juveniles who kill, one of the highest-profile questions confronting the justices as they continue re-examining who is subject to capital punishment.
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Stop executions for a while and perhaps they can be stopped forever. That calculation has been part of the strategy of capital punishment opponents for decades.
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A quarter-century has elapsed since the U.S. experienced as long a pause in executions as the one the Supreme Court has occasioned with its current examination of lethal injections.
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On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will take up the Christopher Simmons case and consider a question that could affect 73 death-row inmates across the nation who committed their crimes before age 18: whether executing such inmates amounts to "cruel and unusual punishment," which is forbidden by the U.S. Constitution's Eighth Amendment.
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Serious problems in state death penalty systems compromise fairness and accuracy in capital punishment cases and justify a nationwide freeze on executions, the American Bar Association says.
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People who carry out executions can sue others who disclose their identities, under a new law that followed reports that a doctor who attended Missouri executions had been sued for malpractice more than 20 times.