June 1981 - June 15, 1981 (Monday)

June 15, 1981 (Monday)

• The State of Oklahoma forgot to execute convicted murderer James William White, who had been sentenced to die by lethal injection, in what would have been the first use in the United States of that form of capital punishment. A reporter from the UPI made a phone call to Oklahoma's Court of Criminal Appeals the next day to inquire about White's status. The Court discovered that nobody had filed an appeal required by state law, and that the state corrections department had incorrectly listed White's sentence as 999 years rather than death.
• In an 8-1 decision, the United States Supreme Court held in the case of Rhodes v. Chapman (452 U.S. 337) that the placing of two prison inmates in a cell designed for one was not a violation of the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment, as long as overall conditions at the prison were adequate. The Court reversed rulings at the district and appellate court level in a class action lawsuit brought by inmates of the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, Ohio.