[JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] on Tuesday overturned [opinion, PDF] the death sentence of an Oklahoma man convicted of killing his girlfriend and her two children. During sentencing, the prosecution had asked three members of the victim’s family to recommend a sentence to the jury, to which the defendant objected. The judge permitted the family members to do so, and all three recommended the death sentence. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals [official website] found [opinion, PDF] that there was no error in this procedure. In a per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court vacated the sentence and remanded the case to determine whether the family members’ recommendation affected the jury’s decision to impose the death penalty.

Capital punishment [JURIST op-ed] remains a controversial issue in the US and worldwide. In May the Supreme Court upheld a stay [JURIST report] of execution for Alabama inmate Vernon Madison. A few days before that a Miami judge ruled [JURIST report] that Florida’s revamped death penalty law is unconstitutional because it does not require a unanimous agreement among jurors to approve executions. In April Virginia’s General Assembly voted [JURIST report] to keep secret the identities of suppliers of lethal injection drugs. In February the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected [JURIST report] a Georgia death row inmate’s legal challenge to the death penalty. In January Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood stated that he plans to ask lawmakers to approve the firing squad [JURIST report], electrocution or nitrogen gas as alternate methods of execution if lethal injection drugs become unavailable.