MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Tuesday commuted the death sentence of a 75-year-old inmate who was set to be executed this week even though he was not in the building when the victim was killed during a 1991 robbery.

The Oregon Supreme Court on Feb. 5, 2026, issued a ruling that will have a wide impact. More than 1,400 criminal cases had to be dismissed, the justices ruled, due to lack of adequate counsel available for defendants.

Like other states, Oregon must provide defendants with legal representation if they cannot afford attorneys on their own. But Oregon has less than one-third of the attorneys it needs to provide adequate defense for indigents, or people who can’t afford counsel on their own.

Representational government rests on a simple idea: that the laws the nation lives under generally reflect what the public wants. In the United States, few issues test that idea more than abortion.

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the Constitution does not guarantee a right to an abortion. The decision effectively overturned nearly 50 years of federally protected access to the procedure and returned primary authority over abortion policy to states.