Out of Scope: January 2, 2024

I’ve been kicking around the idea of returning to weekly editions, and with me also kicking the tires on a new platform (and coming back from a bout with COVID), I thought I’d pull the trigger this week. Here’s a few updates on issues from previous editions, as well as those that might be subjects of an upcoming one.

On the Biden Commutations

Outgoing President Biden is hard to call anything but a failure on capital punishment, and following his defeat last November, activists spent his remaining months pleading with him to empty the federal death row. Shortly before Christmas, he finally delivered…mostly, commuting 37 of the 40 outstanding federal death sentences. The move leaves only Dylann Roof (the Charleston church shooter), Robert Bowers (the Tree of Life shooter), and Dzhokar Tsarnaev (the Boston Marathon bomber) facing Trump’s promised second execution spree.

Several human rights organizations praised the move, while calling attention to Biden’s much more ambitious promises in 2020. Opposition to the death penalty that is anything but categorical is just debating retentionists at the margins. On the other hand, human rights organizations (and newsletter authors) don’t have elections to win, and right-wing media immediately began making hay from the commutations he did make. Like most abolitionists, I’m trying not to make perfect the enemy of good.

As for the remaining death row inmates, only Tsarnaev will surpass the average incarceration on death row between sentence and execution (Roof will just equal it) by 2028, and his case is still pending new litigation. it’s possible Biden spared the entire federal death row from Trump.

Indiana Killed Joseph Corcoran in Secret

Last month, the state of Indiana executed Joseph Corcoran for the murder of four people in 1999. Unlike the vast majority of states and the federal government, Indiana law does not permit media witnesses. The state does, however, permit death row inmates a limited number of witnesses on their behalf; Corcoran gave Indianapolis Chronicle reporter Casey Smith one of four spots.

Even then, Indiana does not paint a picture of transparency. While admitting that the “execution process began“ somewhere around midnight, Corcoran’s witnesses weren’t allowed into the viewing area until more than a half hour later, and the curtain separating the execution chamber and viewing areas was only open for six minutes. Smith didn’t see the IV insertion and couldn’t determine when the state’s pentobarbital began flowing.

Secret executions are not only anathema to fundamental democratic values, it increases the probability of a botched execution. If an execution does go wrong, media witnesses often fight state governments to have it acknowledged and force reviews of the state’s protocols; I have never seen a sua sponte admission that a state or federal execution was botched.

Corcoran’s execution came shortly before the legislature will consider abolishing the death penalty, and was the state’s first execution since 1999 as well as the first using pentobarbital, a popular replacement after sodium thiopental became unavailable.

Updates on Robert Roberson and Richard Glossip

Robert Roberson, convicted on an understanding of shaken baby syndrome that’s increasingly seen as lacking nuance, was spared execution by a last-minute legal victory over a legislative subpoena. The legislature and Attorney General’s office are now wrangling over a second subpoena to appear before the legislature, as the original prosecutor’s office attempts to set a second execution date.

Attorneys for Richard Glossip, who faces execution over the objections of his own state’s attorney general, argued before the Supreme Court last October. A decision is still pending.

British Emergency Medicine Is Fighting Tooth and Nail to Prevent an American Status Quo

As I briefly mentioned above, a round of COVID (more accurately, an underestimation of my recovery needs) recently landed me in the ER. While this cratered my writing output, cost several hundred dollars even on good insurance, and wiped out several days of sick leave, it brought me back in passing contact with a controversy I’d been following—the ER hall bed.

Beds lining an overcrowded ER hallway are a part of every “main” ER I’ve ever brought a patient. Whether functioning as a secondary triage or merely holding the not-actively-dying, they’re a sight so ubiquitous I’d never thought twice about them. It’s a little bit disheartening, therefore, to see other developed nations dig in against the “unacceptable and dangerous“ way we’ve been doing it since time immemorial. The Royal College of Emergency Medicine (UK) notes that “temporary escalation areas“ are a symptom of, as much as a treatment for, hospital overcrowding, something known to contribute to avoidable death.

Reading: Duped, Saul Kassin

I recently finished CUNY psychology professor Saul Kassin’s DUPED: Why Innocent People Confess—And Why We Believe Their Confessions. Even for readers familiar with the prevalence of false confessions in criminal justice, Kassin offers new and shocking information, such as the tendency of false confessions to affect the judgment of forensic investigators.

1  Witnesses for the victim’s families were seated in a separate area.

2  The Death Penalty Information Center did not differentiate here between federal and the several states’ death rows.