Blogging from death row

On Friday, The Washington Post ran this story and the Baltimore Sun ran this story about Maryland death row defendant and blogger Vernon Lee Evans.  The Post story describes Evans as an “amateur advice columnist and convicted murderer,” who is “one of the very few death row inmates to have a blog and, activists say, perhaps the only condemned man worldwide to use a blog to take questions from readers.”  As the article explains, “activist Ginny Simmons started the blog in March and relayed the questions to Evans, who does not have Internet access.”

The death-row blog, entitled “Meet Vernon” and available here with this introduction, had been silent since last May.  However, a new execution date set for next week has led to this recent Q&A post, which has generated these notable comments. 

As documented by this story about a protest at the Maryland capital yesterday, the pending Evans execution is making headlines beyond the defendant’s status as a blogger.  In addition, as this article details, the on-going debate and uncertainty about lethal injection procedures (background here and here) could also impact the Evans case.

UPDATE:  Anyone closely following the trials and tribulations surrounding the legal status of executions via lethal injections should check out this St. Petersburg Times article.