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Q. In the U.S., why are prison executions scheduled at 12:01am?Sleepy judges answering last-minute appeals by phone. Bleary-eyed family members shuffling into witness rooms. Protesters' faces illuminated by candles outside prison fences.These images of midnight executions, ingrained though they are by Hollywood and TV crime shows, have become outdated.Many states have adjusted their schedules in recent years, and the vast majority of U.S. executions now occur during daylight or early evening hours when courts are more accessible, inmates are less likely to protest or become violent. The state also has more time to fight late challenges.Texas changed its execution time in 1995, moving it from midnight to 6 p.m. or later to ease the pressure on lawyers filing late appeals and the judges who must rule on them."Access to the courts is not easy for them to have at midnight or 2 a.m.," Lyons said.Ohio quit midnight executions in 2001 partly to save thousands of dollars in overtime to prison workers.If something was delayed with appeals or something went wrong in the procedure, the Supreme Court's execution warrant would be good for the rest of that calendar day.Moving the execution time to 6 p.m. makes it more practical for witnesses attending an execution and for the courts reviewing the case.States shift away from midnight executionsNASHVILLE, Tenn. — Sleepy judges answering last-minute appeals by phone. Bleary-eyed family members shuffling into witness rooms. Protesters' faces illuminated by candles outside prison fences.These images of midnight executions, ingrained though they are by Hollywood and TV crime shows, have become outdated.Many states have adjusted their schedules in recent years, and the vast majority of U.S. executions now occur during daylight or early evening hours when courts are more accessible, according to an Associated Press review.Of the 34 states where the death penalty has been carried out since 1976, 15 states still execute inmates in the middle of the night.One of them is Tennessee, where double-murderer Steve Henley is to die by injection at 1 a.m. CST Wednesday at Riverbend prison in Nashville. The late hour has some victims' advocates in the state upset."It's a very long, stressful day. It just puts you completely off any routine. It's exhausting and really not necessary," said Verna Wyatt, executive director of You Have the Power, a Nashville-based crime victim advocacy group that has asked Tennessee corrections officials to give up midnight executions.Inmates less likely to protest?Corrections officials in states that still schedule executions between midnight and 3 a.m. argue that inmates are less likely to protest or become violent. The state also has more time to fight late challenges."We would argue things have worked as intended ... in terms of the handling of the various groups, in terms of accommodating the various witnesses and in terms of ensuring security," said Tennessee Correction Commissioner George Little.Those issues haven't greatly complicated daytime or evening executions, according to victims' advocates and states that prefer those times."We know other states are not facing extreme difficulties doing it (earlier)," Wyatt said. "So why not make it easier for everyone?"Four of the five states that have carried out the most executions — Texas, Virginia, Florida and Oklahoma — set afternoon or evening times, while Missouri is the only state to still schedule executions at midnight, the AP found.Texas changed its execution time in 1995, moving it from midnight to 6 p.m. or later to ease the pressure on lawyers filing late appeals and the judges who must rule on them, said Michelle Lyons, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice."Access to the courts is not easy for them to have at midnight or 2 a.m.," Lyons said.The evening executions help Texas prison staff, too."Having it where it can begin anytime after midnight, it can be rough on people," Lyons said.Federal judges have complained about pre-dawn executions for years."I think dispensing justice at that hour of the morning is difficult, to say the least, and we have an obligation ... to give our best efforts in every one of these instances," then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said in 1997.Saving overtime payOhio quit midnight executions in 2001 partly to save thousands of dollars in overtime to prison workers.Daytime executions were the norm in earlier eras. That changed by the 1930s when the U.S. saw its last public hanging. Executions then moved indoors and electric chairs came into widespread use."There was a belief by officials and leaders these (public) executions were brutalizing society," said John Bessler, a visiting associate professor at George Washington University Law School and author of "Death in the Dark: Midnight Executions in America.""There was pickpocketing at these public executions, thefts and sometimes violence. They were trying to get rid of the mob atmosphere that attended these public executions."Little said Tennessee's first modern execution in 2000 was scheduled at 1 a.m. partly because prison officials weren't sure how the inmate population would react. He noted the early hour also allows the state to hold multiple executions on the same day if necessary.The state planned back-to-back executions of convicted killers Paul Dennis Reid and Sedley Alley in 2006. Alley became only the second person executed in Tennessee in 45 years, but Reid got a last-minute stay and remains on death row.Tennessee plans three more executions this year besides Henley's this year, all set for an hour after midnight.Missouri switches time frame for executions, will start around dinner time instead of midnightDeath penalty opponent Margaret Phillips stands alone in an area set aside for protesters outside the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic & Correctional Center in in Bonne Terre, Mo., before the scheduled execution of Missouri death row inmate Joseph Paul Franklin on Nov. 19, 2013. Photo by Jeff Roberson/AP.Cecil Clayton, the oldest prisoner on Missouri's death row, was executed by the state on March 17 for the slaying of a sheriff's deputy in 1996.Missouri will be taking a new approach to executing inmates.For an execution scheduled for March 17 for a Barry County cop-killer named Cecil Clayton, the Missouri Supreme Court has given executioners a new time frame to carry out the death sentence.In the past, Missouri would get a certain day on the calendar to complete the task and the state would start at 12:01 a.m. on that particular day. If something was delayed with appeals or something went wrong in the procedure, the Supreme Court's execution warrant would be good for the rest of that calendar day.Now, the state still has a 24-hour time limit, but the clock will begin at 6 p.m. Missouri was the only remaining state to use the midnight start time, a federal court official said.Department of Corrections' spokesman David Owen said the department wanted the change to better accommodate witnesses."Moving the execution time to 6 p.m. makes it more practical for witnesses attending an execution and for the courts reviewing the case, and falls in line with the majority of other states that carry out executions," Owen said in an email.Families of the victim and the condemned often make the drive to the execution site to watch it unfold. They are summoned hours before the 12:01 a.m. start, told to check in by about 10 p.m., then kept hours on site while courts ponder appeals and act on stays of execution. Even if the execution goes off without delays, the witnesses typically are driving home at 2 or 3 a.m.For years, this was the routine. It was done that way when executions were carried out at Potosi, and more recently at Bonne Terre. State employees whose job it is to oversee the execution often would stay in hotels near the execution site.Missouri will stick with the midnight start once more — for its execution of Walter Storey scheduled for 12:01 a.m. next Wednesday. Storey was sentenced to die for a fatal attack in 1990 on Jill Lynn Frey in her St. Charles apartment.Observers have said the reason for the midnight executions was, in part, to cut down on the risk of inmate disturbances and large protests.Richard Sindel, a defense attorney in Clayton who has represented men on death row, said it may serve a dual purpose of allowing protesters on either side of the debate who want to voice their opinions a more convenient time to stage their protests.But Sindel said he doesn't support the move. "I don't support any change in the execution protocol as long as they are executing people. The protocol I object to is the entire process."Clayton, the first prisoner set to be executed under the time change, was convicted of killing Barry County Sheriff's Deputy Christopher Lee Castetter south of Cassville, Mo., in November 1996. The deputy, 29, was shot in the head while responding to a call about a suspicious vehicle. Prosecutors alleged that Clayton was upset after a break-up and he took a loaded gun to the home of his girlfriend's parents.Clayton's trial was moved to Joplin in Jasper County on a change of venue. The defense attorney argued that Clayton didn't understand his actions that night and that he had lost part of his brain in an accident years earlier.Clayton is now 74.LATE NIGHTSMichael Gans, clerk of the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, has worked on every death penalty case in the circuit that covers Missouri, Arkansas and Nebraska for the past nearly 30 years. He's handled more than a hundred such cases. He was chief deputy from 1985 to 1991, then clerk since 1991. He said Arkansas and Nebraska haven't had executions in years, but they last used a start time of between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m.Missouri's midnight start has meant late nights of work for the federal courts. Missouri executions, even though set to begin just after midnight, have actually happened on occasion closer to 2 or 3 a.m. In some, officials have stopped their work because of motions pending or temporary stays issued, and picked up against the next day at 8 a.m.As for Missouri's switch, Gans said: "It's great to have an earlier starting point than midnight. That doesn't guarantee they won't have court proceedings late. It will be interesting to see how it plays out. I assume some will go forward close to 6 p.m. For others, I'm sure, because of what is going on in the case, the execution will start well after 6 p.m."Gans said he was told by the U.S. Supreme Court staff that Missouri was the last state to execute prisoners starting at 12:01 a.m. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Supreme Court has not replied to a request for comment."We were always told that the Department of Corrections preferred this time (midnight) because of security and prisoner management issues," he said. "It's always easier to do it when the prison is locked down at midnight than when people are moving around."In 1997, then-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor complained about the hour of death in an Arizona execution: "Dispensing justice at that hour of the morning is difficult, to say the least, and we have an obligation . . . to give our best efforts in every one of these instances."According to the Associated Press that year, it was 3 a.m. in Washington DC before the high court finally rejected a flurry of last-minute appeals for Arizona killer William Woratzeck and cleared the way for his death by injection minutes later.A few years before O'Connor's comments, Texas switched its execution time to 6 p.m. instead of between midnight and dawn. And the Associated Press said Ohio quit midnight executions in 2001 partly to save thousands of dollars in overtime to prison workers.Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said the midnight executions meant the justices weren't in the same room to discuss a case and were considering last-minute appeals at 10 and 11 p.m., or later."It's become very rare to have these at midnight or just after midnight," he said. "So it makes sense for Missouri to change, I think."

Thanks for the A2A, Anthony Graham Clark.There is a funny saying that fits here. “A good attorney knows the law. A great attorney knows the judge.”For what it’s worth, I represent that small percentage of trial attorneys that routinely practice in multiple courts. In my case, I had clients in the largest city in the state (metro-pop over 1 million), in a moderately sized city (185,000 pop), and in a smaller county (est. pop. 21,000).I rarely had social interaction with the judges or assistant district attorneys (ADA) in the large county. There were simply too many of them and I spent less than 20% of my time in that county. I did enough to be recognized by many of the ADAs and the criminal court judges, but the pleasantries often extended to a greeting and small talk between clients or cases.My main office was in middle-sized county. I did about 35% of my business in that county. It is where I originally worked as a prosecutor and later where I opened by solo-practice. As a prosecutor, I worked closely with everyone in the DA’s office, the court clerks office, and the five judges in the county. These relationships often included social meetings, including lunch, and it was common for attorneys in the district to mix regularly at different events around town.In the smaller county, where I happened to have grown up, I also knew a lot of folks before I ever became a private attorney. The county was served as part of the DA’s 3-county district. The main DA’s office was in the county where my main office was, and the DA had a satellite office in the smaller county (where I eventually opened a second office).There were two ADAs in the smaller county, and I routinely had lunch with each of them (if not both at one time). Similarly, the court had only three judges, and I often had lunch with one of them, often along with one of the ADAs.Let me extend my comments beyond lunch and look at the typical social engagements one might be involved with at the different levels. With the largest county, I was involved in some local events, mostly charity work, and there were times that I would be at a function along with one of the judges or DAs. I would not consider these chance meetings to be of the same type as going to lunch.Moving the middle-sized and smaller-sized counties, I found that community service brought me even closer to the judges and ADAs. As an example, in both counties, there were judges that were avid golfers, and initially, we would find ourselves at the same charity tournaments throughout the year. Eventually, the two judges, myself, and another private practice attorney (divorce and family lawyer) formed a strong 4-man team, and we often played different events as a group.Other events in the community, such as the Chamber of Commerce, the local bar association, church events, and many other civic events, often found me with judges of ADAs from the individual counties. Some events, such as those with a statewide appeal, would find me with a mix of personnel from all three counties, but in most instances, I tended to socialize more with the judges from the two smaller counties.I want to address the ethical issues that may be presented by a relationship with other attorneys, ADAs, and judges. There is no law or ethical code that prevents such friendships or relationships. The requirements are that an attorney (as well as the respective other parties) maintain a level of professionalism, which would include the choice to NOT discuss or otherwise address any case that is shared.As one might expect, if you work closely with someone, even when they may be a party-opponent or arbiter of some sort, there is a tendency to develop some sort of relationship. So long as the parties involved maintain that professionalism, then there is no real problem. In fact, most of the time when I socialized with the ADAs or judges, it would be rare that we would talk about any cases. Even in the most intimate circumstances, both romantically and otherwise, there is a decorum that can be maintained.

Simple answer: YES. It is a long process.The reason it takes so long has to do with the structure of the federal court system and the authority of the Supreme Court.There are technically two ways to get into the Supreme Court. The issue for us is known as jurisdiction, which refers to a court’s authority to hear and decide a case. For our purposes, the jurisdiction of the court fits into two broad categories. The first of these is original jurisdiction. This form of authority allows a court to hear the matter at the trial level. All cases will begin in a court of original jurisdiction. The second form is that of appellate jurisdiction, which is the authority of a higher court to hear the case and then have the power to reverse or modify a lower court's decision.The Supreme Court is the only court that has both original and appellate jurisdiction. The authority of the Court can be found in Article III, Section II of the Constitution of the United States. The Court has original jurisdiction over certain cases, e.g., suits between two or more states or cases involving ambassadors and other public ministers. As we can see, a matter arising in these areas will start at the Supreme Court. All other matters must come to the court through a very limited system of choice; i.e., the ability of the court to control which cases are ready for hearing and which are rejected.Parties who are not satisfied with the decision of a lower court must petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case. The primary means to petition the court for review is to ask it to grant a Writ of Certiorari (aka Cert). This is a request that the Supreme Court order a lower court to send up the record of the case for review.The Court usually is not under any obligation to hear these cases, and it usually only does so if the case could have national significance, might harmonize conflicting decisions in the federal Circuit courts, and/or could have precedential value. In fact, the Court accepts 100-150 of the more than 7,000 cases that it is asked to review each year. Typically, the Court hears cases that have been decided in either an appropriate U.S. Court of Appeals or the highest Court in a given state (if the state court decided a Constitutional issue).The issue is not a simple one when dealing with Cert. The Supreme Court has its own set of rules. According to these rules, four of the nine (known as the Rule of 4) Justices must vote to accept a case. The rules also require that five of the nine Justices must vote in the affirmative to grant a stay, e.g., a stay of execution in a death penalty case. Under certain instances, one Justice may grant a stay pending review by the entire Court.Some of the more important language governing Cert is found in Rule 10. Here is a passage from the Rules of the Supreme Court:Review on a writ of certiorari is not a matter of right, but of judicial discretion. A petition for a writ of certiorari will be granted only for compelling reasons. The following, although neither controlling nor fully measuring the Court’s discretion, indicate the character of the reasons the Court considers: (a) a United States court of appeals has entered a decision in conflict with the decision of another United States court of appeals on the same important matter; has decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with a decision by a state court of last resort; or has so far departed from the accepted and usual SUPREME COURT RULE 12 course of judicial proceedings, or sanctioned such a departure by a lower court, as to call for an exercise of this Court’s supervisory power; (b) a state court of last resort has decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with the decision of another state court of last resort or of a United States court of appeals; (c) a state court or a United States court of appeals has decided an important question of federal law that has not been, but should be, settled by this Court, or has decided an important federal question in a way that conflicts with relevant decisions of this Court. A petition for a writ of certiorari is rarely granted when the asserted error consists of erroneous factual findings or the misapplication of a properly stated rule of law.As you can see, the rules are very specific (and very complicated). It is the specificity of the rules that create potential traps for the person filing for the first time in the court. On my first trip into the Cert system, I ran into delays twice. Once was of my own doing, I had used the wrong color paper (and the court is picky about its paper) which in turn cost me two weeks of time. The other was on the defendant’s side when they failed to file the proper forms to include a piece of evidence. The point here is that the court’s own rules can cause delay.In addition, the court’s calendar is full, which in turn means there is much more competition to find a spot on that calendar. As noted, there are between 7000 and 9000 cases filed with the court each year. Most of the work needed to sift through these cases is done by support staff, including the clerks, and is often based on an application of the court’s rules. Those cases that make it through the initial stage of internal review will undergo a higher level of review. Eventually, it will take 4 out of 9 justices to agree to hear the case before it will be brought up on Cert.As to time actually taken to get a case before the Court, it will vary tremendously on the relative importance of the case as well as the national interest. Some cases can be before the court in a few months, but these are usually hot-button topics that require action to avoid a constitutional dilemma or a failure in any part of the government. But these quick cases are the exception.On average, it will take between 12 and 24 months for the average case to get before the court. That is time measured from the first filing of a petition with the Court to be heard. In the four cases I have had, the longest was 19 months, and the shortest was 13 months.It should be noted, that not getting your case before the court may be the actual remedy you are seeking. As an example, in a case where I successfully sued the county for a series of civil rights violations, the appeal was taken by the defendant at the trial level (the county). At the first level appeal, conducted before the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, it took about eight months to get in front of the 3-judge panel. At oral arguments, each side had a limited amount of time to present their case. In many instances, and certainly, in this instance, the judges will have questions, and will interrupt your argument to ask them. On this particular case, the panel interrupted the appellee (county) before he even got a chance to start his formal presentation. It went down hill from there.Back to the point, I won at the trial level and now had a victory at the 10th Circuit. The county appealed to the Supreme Court. In that case, I did not want Cert to be granted; in other words, I wanted the Supreme Court to refuse the cases so that the decision of the trial court and 10th circuit would stand. Thankfully, my case was strong enough – and the issues mundane enough – to not need further review. The Court issued their order denying certiorari, and we proceeded to the collection aspect of the case.All in all, this case took 3.5 years from the date I took the case to the day the Supreme Court ruled in my client’s favor.