In jurisprudence, double jeopardy is a procedural defence that prevents an accused person from being tried again on the same charges following an acquittal or conviction and in rare cases prosecutorial and/or judge misconduct in the same jurisdiction. Double jeopardy is a common concept in criminal law. In civil law, a similar concept is that of res judicata. Variation in common law countries is the peremptory plea, which may take the specific forms of autrefois acquit or autrefois convict. These doctrines appear to have originated in ancient Roman law, in the broader principle non bis in idem.
Capital punishment is a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Indiana. The last man executed in the state, excluding federal executions at Terre Haute, was the murderer Matthew Wrinkles in 2009.
Capital punishment was abolished via the legislative process on May 2, 2013, in the U.S. state of Maryland.
Gregg v. Georgia, Proffitt v. Florida, Jurek v. Texas, Woodson v. North Carolina, and Roberts v. Louisiana, 428 U.S. 153 (1976), is a landmark decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. It reaffirmed the Court's acceptance of the use of the death penalty in the United States, upholding, in particular, the death sentence imposed on Troy Leon Gregg. The case is referred to by a leading scholar as the July 2 Cases, and elsewhere referred to by the lead case Gregg. The court set forth the two main features that capital sentencing procedures must employ in order to comply with the Eighth Amendment ban on "cruel and unusual punishments". The decision essentially ended the de facto moratorium on the death penalty imposed by the Court in its 1972 decision in Furman v. Georgia 408 U.S. 238 (1972).
Capital punishment in Alabama is a legal penalty. The state has the highest per capita capital sentencing rate in the United States. In some years, its courts impose more death sentences than Texas, a state that has a population five times as large. However, Texas has a higher rate of executions both in absolute terms and per capita.
Heath v. Alabama, 474 U.S. 82 (1985), is a case in which the United States Supreme Court ruled that, because of the doctrine of "dual sovereignty", the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution does not prohibit one state from prosecuting and punishing somebody for an act of which they had already been convicted of and sentenced for in another state.
The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides: "[N]or shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb..." The four essential protections included are prohibitions against, for the same offense:
Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808 (1991), was a United States Supreme Court case which held that testimony in the form of a victim impact statement is admissible during the sentencing phase of a trial and, in death penalty cases, does not violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eighth Amendment. Payne narrowed two of the Courts' precedents: Booth v. Maryland (1987) and South Carolina v. Gathers (1989).
Walter "Johnny D." McMillian was a pulpwood worker from Monroeville, Alabama, who was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death. His conviction was wrongfully obtained, based on police coercion and perjury. In the 1988 trial, under a controversial Alabama doctrine called "judicial override", the judge imposed the death penalty, although the jury had voted for a sentence of life imprisonment.
Death row, also known as condemned row, is a place in a prison that houses inmates awaiting execution after being convicted of a capital crime and sentenced to death. The term is also used figuratively to describe the state of awaiting execution, even in places where no special facility or separate unit for condemned inmates exists. In the United States, after an individual is found guilty of a capital offense in states where execution is a legal penalty, the judge will give the jury the option of imposing a death sentence or life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. It is then up to the jury to decide whether to give the death sentence; this usually has to be a unanimous decision. If the jury agrees on death, the defendant will remain on death row during appeal and habeas corpus procedures, which may continue for several decades.
Alvin Howard Neelley, Jr. and Judith Ann Adams Neelley are an American married couple who committed the kidnappings and torture murders of Lisa Ann Millican and Janice Kay Chatman; they also attempted a third abduction. Judith was sentenced to death in 1983, but her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1999. She served her sentence at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama. Alvin was serving a life sentence at the Bostick State Prison in Hardwick, Georgia at the time of his death in 2005.
Capital punishment is currently a legal penalty in the U.S. state of Kansas, although it has not been used since 1965.
Willie Jerome "Fly" Manning is on death row at Mississippi State Penitentiary, USA, with two death sentences for a conviction of double murder. He was previously also convicted and sentenced to death for an unrelated double murder, but the State Supreme Court overturned this verdict and ordered a new trial. The charges against him for the Jimmerson-Jordan murders were then dropped, and the Death Penalty Information Center listed him as a 2015 death row exoneree for this case.
Anthony Ray Hinton is an American activist, writer, and author who was wrongly convicted of the 1985 murders of two fast food restaurant managers in Birmingham, Alabama. Hinton was sentenced to death and held on the state's death row for 28 years before his 2015 release.
Capital punishment in Delaware was abolished after being declared unconstitutional by the Delaware Supreme Court on August 2, 2016. The ruling retroactively applies to earlier death sentences, and remaining Delaware death row inmates had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. Despite this, the capital statute for first-degree murder under Title 11, Chapter 42, Section 09, of the Delaware Code has yet to be repealed, though it is unenforceable.
In the United States and other nations that use jury trials, a judicial override is when a judge overrules a jury's sentencing determination.
Capital punishment is a legal punishment in Pennsylvania.
Thomas Warren Whisenhant was an American serial killer who murdered at least four women between 1963 and 1976 in Mobile County, Alabama. After being arrested for the October 1976 murder of Cheryl Payton, Whisenhant confessed to killing three other women. He was sentenced to death in Alabama in September 1977, and was executed in May 2010 at Holman Correctional Facility via lethal injection. At the time of his execution, Whisenhant was Alabama's longest serving death row inmate, spending thirty-two years, eight months, and twenty days on death row.
Matthew Reeves was an American convicted murderer who was executed by the state of Alabama for the 1996 murder of Willie Johnson. Reeves' case generated attention due to claims he was intellectually disabled.
Donald Broadnax is an American serial killer. Originally convicted and sentenced to 99 years imprisonment for fatally shooting a friend in Birmingham, Alabama in 1977, he was released on work release in 1996, whereupon he murdered his wife and her grandson. For the latter crime, Broadnax was convicted and sentenced to death, and is currently awaiting execution.
