Both state and federal officials are pursuing murder charges against a man they say killed a state lawmaker and her husband. A federal case could lead to the death penalty.
A makeshift memorial for State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark Hortman, began to form outside the Minnesota State Capitol in Saint Paul earlier this week.
Diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, he spent 30 years on death row. In 2007, the Supreme Court raised the bar for executing the mentally ill, though Texas still tried to put him to death.
Scott Panetti in a prison visitation cell in Texas in 2006. The following year, the U.S. Supreme Court held that an individual must have a “rational understanding” of why the state planned to put him to death.
Sunny Jacobs in 2019. She spent nearly 17 years in prison in Florida, five of them on death row, for the murders of two law enforcement officers at a Florida rest stop.
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