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Supreme Court Halts Prisoner Execution in Texas

Although we usually don't discuss the death penalty on here, one reason being that it has nothing to do with parole in Texas, I have been fighting with my conscience in the last few weeks on whether to address the issue of the prison system being about to use a new chemical for lethal injection because they had run out of stores of the old chemical and couldn't acquire any more. I guess that is one result of a prison system that executes people in an assembly line process. However,Read More


The Supreme Court Giveth and the Supreme Court Screweth Up…

On the same day the US Supreme Court handed down the perfectly reasonable decision in Graham v. Florida, discussed here on this blog, they chose to trash the entire concept on which the American justice system is based. While this wasn't a Texas case, it is still important as long as we live in a state which has an express lane for the death chamber and is more than willing to do everything it can to imprison people for as long as possible. The ABC News story is here, butRead More


U.S. Supreme Court Bans Life Without Parole for Juveniles

For once, Texas was ahead of the trends in the criminal justice system since last session Governor Perry signed SB 839, a bill authored by Senator Juan Hinojosa, which allowed juveniles to be considered for parole after 40 years. Not a huge difference from life in prison, but at least something. The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 6-3 split vote, held that the Eighth Amendment's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment did not allow a sentence of life without parole for juveniles. Although in this case the juvenile was sentencedRead More