The changed timing of executions

Triggered by the fact that Tennessee has an execution scheduled for the middle of the night, the AP has this new piece headlined “States shift away from holding midnight executions.”  Here are a few snippets from an interesting article: 

Many states have adjusted their schedules in recent years, and the vast majority of U.S. executions now occur during daylight or early evening hours when courts are more accessible, according to an Associated Press review.  Of the 34 states where the death penalty has been carried out since 1976, 15 states still execute inmates in the middle of the night.

One of them is Tennessee, where double-murderer Steve Henley is to die by injection at 1 a.m. CST Wednesday at Riverbend prison in Nashville.  The late hour has some victims’ advocates in the state upset.  “It’s a very long, stressful day. It just puts you completely off any routine. It’s exhausting and really not necessary,” said Verna Wyatt, executive director of You Have the Power, a Nashville-based crime victim advocacy group that has asked Tennessee corrections officials to give up midnight executions.

Corrections officials in states that still schedule executions between midnight and 3 a.m. argue that inmates are less likely to protest or become violent.  The state also has more time to fight late challenges….  Those issues haven’t greatly complicated daytime or evening executions, according to victims’ advocates and states that prefer those times. “We know other states are not facing extreme difficulties doing it (earlier),” Wyatt said. “So why not make it easier for everyone?”

Four of the five states that have carried out the most executions — Texas, Virginia, Florida and Oklahoma — set afternoon or evening times, while Missouri is the only state to still schedule executions at midnight, the AP found.

Texas changed its execution time in 1995, moving it from midnight to 6 p.m. or later to ease the pressure on lawyers filing late appeals and the judges who must rule on them, said Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice…. Ohio quit midnight executions in 2001 partly to save thousands of dollars in overtime to prison workers.