The Florida Supreme Court's decision in Eddie Junior Bigham v. State leads this week.  The Bigham Court  reduces the condemned's conviction to second degree murder. "ecause we conclude the evidence is insufficient to prove premeditation." "While we find that the evidence was sufficient to rule out any hypothesis but that Bigham caused Lulu's death, we do not find that the evidence was sufficient to prove that Bigham had the conscious purpose to kill Lulu." One justice dissents on whether there was even enough evidence to convict Bigham of any degree of homicide in the death of Lourdes "LuLu" Cavazos-Blandin. Another justice dissented believing there was enough circumstantial evidence to prove premeditation.

Falling in the "win for now" category is Paul Everette Woodward v. Epps from the Fifth Circuit granting a COA. A "COA is granted on the issue of whether the State's use of peremptory challenges at Woodward's resentencing violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under Batson." "Woodward has provided evidence that the prosecution struck 100% of the eligible black jurors using its peremptory challenges. While it is unclear at this juncture whether Woodward has demonstrated that 'all relevant circumstances' raise an inference of purposeful discrimination, we conclude that, given the State’s strike of every potential black juror, and the district court’s apparent failure to consider Woodward’s 'totality of the circumstances' argument, this issue is 'adequate to deserve encouragement to proceed further.'"

"Acting on a claim by Mexico’s government that the U.S. government has not done enough to assure the treaty rights of Mexican nationals facing execution for murders in the U.S., the World Court on Wednesday ordered the U.S. — by a 7-5 vote — to stop five imminent executions in Texas. Leaving it up to the U.S. to choose the way to carry out the order, the international tribunal — formally, the International Court of Justice that sits in The Hague, Netherlands — told the U.S. only to “take all measures necessary to ensure” that Texas does not execute five individuals on its death row.. . . The text of the World Court decision (but not including three dissenting opinions) can be downloaded here.  A press release summarizing the 21-page majority ruling here." [via SCOTUSBlog]

Responding to juror concerns that unclear jury instructions resulted in any unnecessary death sentence, “on July 15th, Governor Brad Henry of Oklahoma granted a 30-day stay of execution to Kevin Young, who was originally scheduled to be executed on July 22nd. His new execution date is August 21st. Governor Henry announced the stay in order to have more time to review Kevin Young’s case.” [via AI’s DP blog].

The Missouri Supreme Court has stayed John Middleton’s execution date.   The Court stayed Middleton’s execution date in light of ongoing lethal injection litigation. With the stay, in the next 60 days there appears to be no executions scheduled outside the states of the Death Belt (the Old Confederacy + Oklahoma).

In other news, as most probably know, cops in Maryland have been targeting people opposed to the ultimate use of state power.  Maryland State Police officers conducted surveillance on local peace activists and groups opposed to the death penalty, including some in Takoma Park, for more than a year during the administration of former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R), documents released this morning show. No evidence of criminal behavior was reported during almost 3 years of observation. Read more

New scholarship is noted.  DePaul Law Review spends an entire looking at Atkins & its aftermath.  Three articles from law review are the “to read” stack already.

• Andrea D. Lyon,  But He Doesn’t Look Retarded: Capital Jury Selection for the Mentally Retarded Client Not Excluded after Atkins v. Virginia, 57 DePaul Law Review 701 (2008)

• Carol S. Steiker and Jordan M. Steiker,  Atkins v. Virginia: Lessons from Substance and Procedure in the Constitutional Regulation of Capital Punishment, 57 DePaul Law Review 721 (2008)

• Bryan Stevenson,  The Effect of Atkins Below the Mason-Dixon Line, 57 DePaul Law Review 741 (2008)

Suffolk Transnational Law Review recaps a recent symposium on Medellin v. Texas (link is to the entire issue of the law review).  I am especially looking forward to:

• Margaret E. McGuinness,  Three Narratives of Medellin v. Texas, 31 Suffolk Transnational Law Review 227 (2008)

Other recent articles of note can be found here.

In the last of our news roundups, DPIC has a thought provoking post entitled “STUDIES: Estimates of Wrongful Convictions by Those Involved in the System.”  DPIC also notes, "a new study published in the American Journal of Political Science investigates the connection between death penalty decisions and the practice of electing judges." Finally, the Canadian Press looks at capital charging choices in "Ohio Prosecutors Seeking Life Without Parole Instead of Death Penalty."

Looking ahead, no favorable opinions are so far noted and two troubling opinions. The Georgia Supreme Court in Antron Daway Fair & Damon Antwon Jolly v. State  holds a Defendant need not know the decedent was a police officer in order for the officer's death to be tried capitally.  The Ohio Supreme Court holds in State v. Delano Hale that where lawyer voir dire is available a judge need not "life qualify" a jury even if counsel does not.

As always thanks for reading and for forgiving the typos in advance - k