Georgia Supreme Court stays execution scheduled for this week

Providing still more evidence that the Supreme Court has helped create a de facto moratorium on executions, the Georgia Supreme Court has now blocked the scheduled execution of condemned defendant Jack Alderman, which was to take place tomorrow. This local article provides more details:

Alderman was scheduled to die at 7 p.m. Friday, but 27 hours earlier the Georgia Supreme Court issued a stay.  The justices wrote in their order that their reasoning was based on the U.S. Supreme Court decision last month to hear a Kentucky inmate’s challenge to the three-drug lethal injection method, and then a decision by that same court on Wednesday to stop an execution that was scheduled in Virginia.

“It certainly seems a [national] moratorium is now in place on lethal injections and all executions until the [U.S.] Supreme Court issues an opinion in the Kentucky case,” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington. “The pattern seems clear. Lower courts and state courts have gotten that message.”