Two Death Sentences Overturned by Federal Courts: Addicted Judge in Arizona and Mentally Ill Inmate in Arkansas

Warren Summerlin) who has spent nearly 20 years on death row in Arizona is entitled to have his sentence reconsidered because the judge who imposed it was addicted to marijuana at the time, a sharply divided federal appeals court ruled Friday.

 'The experts tell us that we can tolerate a certain number of insignificant parts of arsenic in our drinking water and a certain irreducible number of insect parts in our edible grain supplies,' U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Stephen S. Trott wrote in the 2-to-1 decision. 'But we need not, and we should not, similarly tolerate a single drug-addicted jurist whose judgment is impaired, especially in a case involving life-and-death decisions.'" 

(H. Weinstein)

 A federal appeals court commuted the death sentence of Charles Singleton in Arkansas because he could understand his punishment only if the state forced him to take anti-psychotic drugs. 

ARKANSAS: COURT BARS EXECUTION

A federal appeals court panel commuted the death sentence of a convicted killer because he could understand his punishment only if the state forced him to take anti-psychotic drugs. The ruling, by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, came in the case of Charles L. Singleton, 42, who was convicted of murdering a grocer in 1979.