Military Death Penalty in the News

The application of the death penalty in the military comes under scrutiny in two articles in the Kansas City Star today. In the first article, a new study is discussed which purports to have discovered a racial bias in the application of the death penalty in the military. The second article addresses competency of defense counsel in defending capital cases, particularly in the sentencing phase, where the effectiveness of the presentation can literally mean the difference between life and death for the accused. It notes a rather staggering statistic regarding appellate reversals: ten of the sixteen men who have been sentenced to death by the military since 1984 have been resentenced to life in prison.