How the race of the accused impacts not only the likelihood of his or her arrest, but the chance of conviction and the severity of punishment is a critical and vital component to any defense of a death penalty case, as exemplified in the current pre-trial motions being filed in the Markeith Loyd matter by Terence Lenamon we have shared in previous posts. New DPIC Report on Racial Discrimination in Death Penalty Cases This…

Revisit the Rodney King Case with attorney Milton Grimes Renowned trial lawyer Milton Grimes is not only a fellow faculty member with Terence Lenamon at the Trial Lawyer’s College, but he is also one of Terry’s friends, who Terry describes as simply a “fabulous attorney.”  Mr. Grimes is doing a free revisit of his representation of Rodney King in the present day in conjunction with the TLC. “There will definitely be some real good stuff…

Three new motions have been filed in the defense of Markeith Loyd in his death penalty trial by Terence Lenamon. These have all been placed in Terry’s Online Library as a courtesy, as filed of record with the Orange County Clerk’s Office. Also included in the Online Library update is Amendment Six (6) to the Florida Supreme Court’s Emergency COVID-19 Administrative Order, issued August 12, 2020, by Chief Justice Canady. These motions, as well as…

This past week, Markeith Loyd’s defense attorney Terence Lenamon presented the defense’s Motion to Dismiss with oral arguments being heard in the courtroom of the Honorable Leticia Marques, who is presiding over the murder trial where Mr. Loyd stands accused of the capital crime homicide involving the death of Orlando Police Lt. Debra Clayton. To watch a portion of the proceedings, including a portion of Terry Lenamon’s arguments to the court, check out the video …

“We tracked down a broad array of those connected to the event, to present a three-dimensional account of the first federal execution in 17 years.” That’s how writers Keri Blakiner and Maurice Chammah describe their efforts, as published on July 24, 2020, by The Marshall Project in partnership with Slate Magazine.   Their entire article is entitled “Witnesses to the Execution, an oral history of the first federal execution under Donald Trump, as told by …

The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) has quite a lot of interesting information regarding executions in the United States so far this year, including how the Coronavirus Pandemic has impacted capital punishment in the first half of 2020.  Consider the following: There have been ten (10) executions in 2020. One execution has been by electrocution (Tennessee’s execution of Nicholas Todd Sutton in February 2020). Pentobarbital still predominates in lethal injection protocols as a single-drug…

History buffs may recall King Henry VIII granted Anne Boleyn’s request for a special French executioner who would decapitate her using a sword, rather than the standard beheading method of an ax (which might take several blows before succeeding in severing the head from the neck).  A swift decapitation was considered to be merciful and painless. Of course, minimizing pain for the condemned has rarely been a concern for the state; consider the horrific …