Undignified Deaths

• It takes only four of the U.S. Supreme Court justices to accept a case for review, but it takes five to stay an execution. On January 23, the Court accepted the case challenging Oklahoma's death penalty chemicals, but the lead challenger, Charles Warner, lacking that fifth "stay" vote, had been executed eight days earlier (using the challenged chemicals), during the time the justices were deliberating. (The case, Warner vs. Gross, was immediately renamed Glossip V. Gross, but Richard Glossip himself was scheduled to die on January 28. Then, without explanation, at least one other justice supplied Glossip's missing fifth vote, and, with one day to spare, his execution was stayed until the challenge to the chemicals is resolved.) [New York Times, 1-26-2015]

• Only 17 states have specific laws to protect against "revenge porn" (exposing ex-lovers' intimate images online as retaliation for a break-up), but a possible solution in the other states, reported CNN in April, is for the victim to file a "takedown" demand under the federal Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which would subject the avenger to penalties for not removing the images. However, to prove copyright, the victim must file copies of the bawdy images with the U.S. Copyright Office, increasing the victim's trauma (though an office spokesman told CNN that only the copyright examiner would see them). [CNN Wire via WTKR-TV (Hampton Roads, Va.), 4-27-2015]

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