15 Years Of Arizona Death Sentences Questioned By Court

A federal appeals court is questioning Arizona’s process of determining the death penalty.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered the re-sentencing of James McKinney, sentenced to death in Arizona in 1993, in a decision that several judges warned calls into question 15 years of death sentences handed down in the state.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, sharply split on a 6-5 vote, granted McKinney’s request that his death sentence — though not his underlying murder conviction — be tossed out unless the state re-sentences him under a constitutional system or imposes a lesser sentence than death “within a reasonable period.”

…At issue is Arizona’s “causal nexus” test, at use from from 1989 until 2005, in which evidence of a “difficult family background or mental disorder” only could be considered a mitigating factor — diminishing responsibility — during the sentencing phase of a death penalty trial “if it had a causal effect on the defendant’s behavior in the commission of the crime at issue.”

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.