Alabama to try nitrogen gas after botched execution

ATMORE, Ala. — Alabama is poised to use nitrogen gas in a planned execution next month, the first state to attempt such a method, setting the stage for legal challenges as officials across the U.S. examine alternatives amid a shortage of lethal injection drugs.

But while Alabama is intent on using nitrogen hypoxia, in which a person breathes only nitrogen and dies from a lack of oxygen, some details of the protocol remain cloaked in mystery to the public.

Even the inmate who is set to die, Kenneth Eugene Smith, told NBC News this month that he is not privy to an unredacted state protocol describing how the procedure will work. His legal and medical representatives were permitted this month to tour the execution chamber and inspect a mask for breathing the nitrogen, but without Smith...

...Adding to the novelty of his case, Smith, 58, is a rare example of a person surviving a failed execution attempt: A previous plan to put him to death by lethal injection in November 2022 was called off when prison staff was unable to find a suitable vein. This, in addition to mounting scrutiny over the use of the lethal injection in other inmates, set off a pause in executions in Alabama.

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This is barbaric. The state already tried the kill the man and FAILED. His sentence should have been immediately commuted to life without parole. If you are going to do capital punishment, it should be as quick and painless as reasonably possible. The British had it down to less than a minute from the moment the hangman walked into the condemned man's cell to the trap door being released. Why are we one of only a handful of countries that still routinely executes people, and yet we can't figure out how to kill someone quickly and without torturing them?

Here's a free tip for the people of Alabama. A large caliber pistol with a single bullet is all you really need. If you are obsessed with having some kind of contraption do the deed, the French method also works very well and is about as fast as you can get. 

Or better yet, just abolish capital punishment for all crimes except intentional murder committed after being sentenced to life in prison. 

A face of hope for a post Trump GOP?

Tommy Tuberville has received months of attention this year for his blockade of military promotions, but the more consequential GOP Alabama senator is his newly elected counterpart, Katie Britt.

In fact, there may be no better Republican barometer than Britt.

How far she goes will in turn go a long way toward clarifying how much politics has, or hasn’t, changed in her state, her party and the South. Does the future look like Tuberville — light on policy and heavy on performance — or is there a role, and perhaps a leading one, for somebody like Britt?

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Alabama

A poll released today  by FM3 Research shows Donald Trump ahead of Joe Biden in the heart of Dixie by a comfortable 14%. Of course no one who has spent more than fifteen minutes, give or take, on this planet would think that Joe Biden has any chance of carrying the state. Alabama is as conservative and reliably Republican as California is liberal and Democratic.

And therein lies what may be a warning sign. In 2016 Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 63% to 35%. That's a margin of 28%. Which is about what one would expect in what is effectively a one party state. But somewhere along the line, Trump's support among Alabama voters has eroded, severely.

Nor is this an isolated case. Georgia and Texas are generally safe states for the GOP but polls have been consistently showing both to be very close. (Texas has not gone Democratic in a presidential election since 1976.)

In those cases population demographics may also be at play. Texas has seen a rise in Hispanics and an influx of migrants fleeing left wing states, especially California. It is deeply ironic that so many who are fleeing the train-wrecks of the left coast are nonetheless clinging to their liberal beliefs. In the case of Georgia there has also been some incoming migration, chiefly among Afro-Americans who now perceive parts of the South to be more hospitable to blacks than many of the Northern states to which their ancestors fled during the era of Jim Crow.

However, none of this is true of Alabama. Trump's sharp decline in the polls cannot be laid at the feet of changing demographics or other similar causes. The plain fact is that somewhere around one in five people who voted for the president four years ago are not, as of the moment, planning on doing so again this year.

Of course the election is still far enough off that much could change. At least some of the polling data was collected before the current wave of left-wing mob violence reached its current level, so I am taking these numbers with a grain of salt. But with Trump trailing by wide margins in many of the traditional swing states that he carried narrowly in 2016, a statistically significant loss of support in a state so firmly Republican that it generally doesn't rate many polls in presidential election years, is worth taking notice of.

Roy Moore wants to run again for the US Senate

The ONLY man in the entire state of Alabama who could lose a Senate seat to a pro-abortion Democrat is looking for a re-match. I am pretty sure that the only people hoping Roy will throw his hat in the ring are every Democrat in the entire country and the full run of late night television comedians. Did I just repeat myself?  Even Don Jr. (not the brightest bulb on the tree) thinks it's time for Roy to "ride off into the sunset."

Details.

Alabama

There was no good outcome for last night's Senate election in Alabama. Predictably, the usual suspects are calling this a rejection of Trump when it is no such thing (though I wish it were). No the voters did not reject Trump who remains extremely popular in Alabama. No Alabama did not just become a swing state. All they did was reject a fringe candidate who has been credibly accused of acts involving what we used to refer to as moral turpitude. This was a political blip and unless Doug Jones votes primarily as a conservative on most issues and in particular flips on the issue of abortion, his chances of being re-elected in 2020 are pretty slim.

Rod Drehere's thoughts on the Roy Moore debacle

An interesting and wide ranging take on the political nightmare in Alabama where the choice for the US Senate appears to be between a fundamentalist theocratic wingnut who is also very probably (though not definitely) a child sex predator on the one hand and a man who is comfortable killing children who are inconvenient, provided they haven't been born yet on the other.

My take: Hold your nose and vote for the theocratic wingnut molester. I think it unlikely he will spend much time in the Senate. He is too much of a political liability, and it seems that there are actually some lines that even Republicans won't let one of their own cross. I think if he is elected that the Senate will either refuse to seat him or they will expel him immediately after he takes the oath of office. Like Mitch McConnell I believe the women. But I also believe that the Washington Post had this story in the can for a while and deliberately held it back until after the loon won the GOP primary and the last date where he could be replaced on the ballot was safely past.  If Moore gets elected and subsequently barred from the Senate (or expelled) then the governor gets to name his replacement pending a new election.

All of which said, this is one of those situations where the overused expression, "the lesser of two evils" is definitely apropos.

A Defiant Alabama Supreme Court Tells Feds to Mind Their Own Business on Gay Marriage

The Alabama Supreme Court ordered a halt Tuesday to same-sex marriages in the state despite a U.S. Supreme Court order allowing them to proceed. The ruling capped a wild month of confusion and resistance in Alabama following a January decision by a U.S. district court invalidating Alabama’s ban on gay marriage. 

The Alabama justices were defiant. “As it has done for approximately two centuries,” the court said, “Alabama law allows for ‘marriage’ between only one man and one woman.” Alabama judges have a duty “not to issue any marriage license contrary to this law. Nothing in the United States Constitution alters or overrides this duty.”

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Alabama sees widespread defiance of gay marriage ruling

MOBILE, Ala. — Amid legal showdowns and high-level defiance, Alabama was buffeted by feuds over same-sex marriage Monday after courts cleared the way but some judges resisted issuing licenses to gay and lesbian couples.

The discord appeared to throw Alabama — for the moment at least — into a patchwork of rules, with at least eight of the state’s 67 counties blocking licenses.

The opposition included either outright rejection or simply closing up shop for the day — leaving some hopeful couples waiting in vain.

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Santorum Wins Mississippi and Alabama in Blow to Romney

Rick Santorum has won Republican primaries in Mississippi and Alabama, exit polls and vote tallies show--a surprising Deep South sweep that signals Santorum is consolidating support among the party’s conservatives.

Both of the wins were narrow: just a few points separated Santorum from rivals Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich. The larger lesson of the night was that this long-running primary--far from leading the party to unite behind a favorite--has left Republicans divided stubbornly into thirds.

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When a county runs off a cliff

ONE county jail here is so crowded that some inmates sleep on the floor, while the other county jail, a few miles down the road, sits empty.

There is no money for the second one anymore.

The county roads here need paving, and the tax collector needs help.

There is no money for them, either.

There is no money for a lot of things around here, not since Jefferson County, population 658,000, went bankrupt last fall. There is no money for holiday D.U.I. checkpoints, litter patrols or overtime pay at the courthouse. None for crews to pull weeds or pick up road kill — not even when, as happened recently, an unlucky cow was hit near the town of Wylam.

“We don’t do that any more,” E. Wayne Sullivan, director of the roads and transportation department, said of such roadside cleanup.

This is life today in Jefferson County — Bankrupt, U.S.A. For all the talk in Washington about taxes and deficits, here is a place where government finances, and government itself, have simply broken down. The county, which includes the city of Birmingham, is drowning under $4 billion in debt, the legacy of a big sewer project and corrupt financial dealings that sent 17 people to prison.

If you want to take a broad view, the trouble really began with the Constitutional Convention of the State of Alabama in 1901. The document that emerged there — written to empower business interests and disenfranchise African-Americans and poor whites — gives towns and counties little authority over local issues. Local taxing power rests with the state, though state lawmakers are loath to wield it today, in an age of anti-tax populism. Last summer, the Supreme Court of Alabama struck down a tax that was a crucial source of revenue for Jefferson County, finally pushing the county over the brink.

Officials here have only begun to grapple with the implications of life under Chapter 9 of the federal bankruptcy code, a municipal form of debt adjustment, rather than reorganization or liquidation. Until now, the most famous example was Orange County, Calif., which filed for Chapter 9 in 1994, after risky investments went horribly wrong. Many local governments are struggling to pay their bills these days, but hardly any have filed for bankruptcy. Notable exceptions include Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, Vallejo, Calif., and Central Falls, R.I.

“This is really a journey without a road map,” said John S. Young, the civil engineer who was appointed by an Alabama court to figure out how to fix Jefferson County’s sewer system. Today he is that project’s official receiver in name only: a federal bankruptcy court has suspended his powers, ruling that the federal bankruptcy law trumps state laws that protect bondholders.

Ordinary citizens can’t do much at this point. Jefferson County has even canceled municipal elections scheduled for this August. It seems that there’s no money for voting booths, either.

Read the rest here.

Supreme Court rules in favor of Alabama death row inmate

The Supreme Court Wednesday ordered a new hearing for an Alabama death-row inmate who missed a critical appeals deadline because his lawyers at a prestigious New York law firm ceased to represent him without telling him or court officials.

The circumstances surrounding the appeals of Cory R. Maples--which included a mailroom mix-up at the law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell that returned unopened an adverse ruling against Maples--created a “veritable perfect storm of misfortune,” according to Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

Such extraordinary events, the court ruled 7 to 2, meant Maples deserved another hearing.

“No just system would lay the default at Maples’ death-cell door,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority.

The court went to some length to explain that it was not adjusting its previous decisions that in most post-conviction appeals, the mistakes of lawyers must be attributed to their clients and cannot be grounds for a new hearing.

“A markedly different situation is presented, however, when an attorney abandons his client without notice, and thereby occasions the default,” Ginsburg wrote.

Maples was convicted of shooting two acquaintances in the head in 1995. He stole money and a car, and he confessed when captured two weeks later. He is not contesting his guilt.

Read the rest here.

Ala. gov. apologizes for remarks on non-Christians

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley apologized Wednesday for his remarks about only Christians being his brothers and sisters.

Bentley said he didn't mean to insult anyone when he told a church crowd on Monday that those who have not accepted Jesus as their savior are not his brothers and sisters, shocking some critics who questioned whether he can be fair to non-Christians.

"Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother," Bentley said Monday, just moments into his new administration, according to The Birmingham News.

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