Court halts another Texas execution over disability claims
National News
A Texas appeals court has delayed a second execution this year to review claims that an inmate is intellectually disabled and thus ineligible for the death penalty.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday granted a request by attorneys for Edward Lee Busby to stay his execution, which had been scheduled for Feb. 10.
Busby’s attorneys have argued he has shown “significant limitations in intellectual functioning.”
The U.S, Supreme Court in 2002 barred the execution of intellectually disabled people, but it has given states some discretion to decide how to determine such disabilities.
Busby’s execution would have been the first in the state this year after the appeals court last month delayed the Jan. 21 lethal injection of Blaine Milam to review his intellectual disability claims.
Busby, 48, was condemned for the 2004 suffocation of a retired 77-year-old college professor abducted in Fort Worth and whose body was later recovered in Oklahoma.
Texas’ first execution of 2021 is now set for March 4, with Ramiro Ibarra set to receive a lethal injection for the 1987 sexual assault and strangulation of a 16-year-old girl in Waco.
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USCIS Will Begin Accepting CW-1 Petitions for Fiscal Year 2019
On April 2, 2018, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) will begin accepting petitions under the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (CNMI)-Only Transitional Worker (CW-1) program subject to the fiscal year (FY) 2019 cap. Employers in the CNMI use the CW-1 program to employ foreign workers who are ineligible for other nonimmigrant worker categories. The cap for CW-1 visas for FY 2019 is 4,999.
For the FY 2019 cap, USCIS encourages employers to file a petition for a CW-1 nonimmigrant worker up to six months in advance of the proposed start date of employment and as early as possible within that timeframe. USCIS will reject a petition if it is filed more than six months in advance. An extension petition may request a start date of Oct. 1, 2018, even if that worker’s current status will not expire by that date.
Since USCIS expects to receive more petitions than the number of CW-1 visas available for FY 2019, USCIS may conduct a lottery to randomly select petitions and associated beneficiaries so that the cap is not exceeded. The lottery would give employers the fairest opportunity to request workers, particularly with the possibility of mail delays from the CNMI.
USCIS will count the total number of beneficiaries in the petitions received after 10 business days to determine if a lottery is needed. If the cap is met after those initial 10 days, a lottery may still need to be conducted with only the petitions received on the last day before the cap was met. USCIS will announce when the cap is met and whether a lottery has been conducted.