Technicality

So it looks like Steven Victor Wertz has escaped execution on what some may regard as a technicality, a procedural error. Here’s a video of the ruling from the Arkansas Court.

The Arkansas Times of 9 June 2016 reports:

In this case, the jury was given a single set of the forms to cover the two individual guilty verdicts in the couple’s deaths and it found aggravating factors sufficient to warrant a death sentence.

The court said it found merit in Wertz’s argument that the combined forms denied him “the individualized sentencing and protection from invalid aggravating circumstances required under the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

The headline is

Sharp County death penalty reversed by Arkansas Supreme Court

Another report (which forbids any copying of ‘their’ text – which of course they themselves had no problem copying from elsewhere) headlines it as

Court overturns death sentence of former police officer

A somewhat topical matter as regards punishments meted out to those who protect and serve – even if they weren’t actually protect-and-serving at the time in question.

The aforementioned video is not of a straightforward rubber-stamping exercise and lasts over 40 minutes.