This week’s mainstream coverage focused on three death‑penalty–related developments: federal prosecutors pushing to keep the death penalty in the Luigi Mangione case while fighting suppression of evidence from a McDonald’s arrest; the release on bond of Jimmie Duncan after his conviction was vacated amid flawed forensic evidence (notably bite‑mark testimony tied to Michael West and pathologist Steven Hayne); and the death of a Utah death‑row inmate with dementia after the state halted his scheduled execution. Reports emphasized procedural moves, evidence disputes, and statements from prosecutors, judges and victims’ families.
Coverage largely omitted broader context and independent analysis that would help readers assess systemic issues: racial disparities in wrongful convictions and exonerations (e.g., nine of Louisiana’s 12 death‑row exonerees are Black; Black people account for a disproportionate share of exonerations nationally), documented failures of bitemark evidence and specific expert misconduct (at least 26 wrongful convictions linked to bitemark evidence; Michael West implicated in multiple erroneous cases), and health and mortality patterns on death row (higher dementia prevalence among older inmates, and a greater likelihood of dying by suicide or natural causes than by execution due to long appeals). There were no opinion or social‑media pieces cited and no contrarian viewpoints identified in the files reviewed; readers relying only on mainstream pieces might therefore miss critical statistical, historical, and forensic perspectives that bear directly on these cases.