Updated: Friday, February 12, 2021 - 8:47am
Johnny Cash famously sang about shooting a man in Reno, “just to watch him die in his legendary “Folsom Prison Blues.” In the song “Money Trees,” Pulitzer Prize-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar proclaims “the one in front of the gun lives forever.” While both songs depict gun violence, only one is banned in Arizona prisons.
When an inmate receives a letter, magazine, book or CD in the mail, prison administrators review the materials first. If the items fall within one of several broad categories established by Arizona Department of Corrections guidelines, the inmate is denied the material. Reasons for exclusion can include “depictions of street gangs” to “descriptions of drug paraphernalia.”
Supreme Court Rebuffs Alabamaâs Effort to Bar Pastor From Execution Chamber
The case was the latest in a series of disputes over the presence of spiritual advisers in execution chambers that have bitterly divided the justices.
The Supreme Court allowed the execution of another Alabama inmate in a similar case in 2019, but months later stayed the execution of a Texas inmate.Credit.Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times
Feb. 12, 2021
WASHINGTON â The Supreme Court late Thursday night let stand a ruling that halted the execution of an Alabama inmate unless the state allowed his pastor to be present in the death chamber.
Alabama calls off execution after US Supreme Court rules inmate, 51, convicted of fatally shooting a cop s sister in 1991 cannot be put to death without his pastor in the chamber
Willie B. Smith III, 51, had been scheduled to receive a lethal injection on Thursday night at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Alabama
The US Supreme Court ruled to stay Smith s execution hours before
It ruled the state must allow Smith s personal pastor in the death chamber
Alabama has maintained that non-prison staff should not be in the room for security reasons
Smith was sentenced in 1992 for the murder of Sharma Ruth Johnson
Governor Andrew M. Cuomo provides a coronavirus update from the Red Room at the State Capitol on January 29, 2021. | Mike Groll/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo)
A federal judge permanently blocked New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s controversial restrictions on indoor worship gatherings that the U.S. Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction against last November.
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Kiyo A. Matsumoto, a George W. Bush appointee, granted a permanent injunction to block Cuomo s COVID-19 guidelines as applied to all houses of worship listed in red and orange zones throughout the state.
In red zones, houses of worship were subject to a limit of 25% maximum occupancy or 10 people, whichever is fewer. Meanwhile, places of worship in orange zones were subject to a limit of 33% maximum occupancy or 25 people, whichever is fewer.
February 8, 2021
In a Friday night 6-3 injunction responding to emergency petitions from two California churches, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its opinion that California’s restrictions against worship services have gone too far. The court gave a short, unsigned opinion demanding California lift its restrictions on in-person, indoor church services while allowing California to keep banning singing and limiting attendance to 25 percent of church buildings’ capacity.
The decision allows churches to present evidence in lower courts that Gov. Gavin Newsom’s lockdown rules violate the First Amendment and other antidiscrimination measures by limiting their operations in ways that other institutions are not, such as the ability to meet indoors. The court’s injunction applied to two cases,