This week, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill joining Oklahoma and Mississippi in allowing officials to execute prisoners using nitrogen gas, a new, untested,
A new poll conducted by Quinnipiac University finds that American voters choose life without parole over the death penalty 51-37 percent, the first time a
Anthony Ray Hinton spent 30 years on Alabama’s death row for a crime he didn’t commit. He was exonerated and freed in April 2015. The
Tomorrow, on the three-week anniversary of the botched execution of Doyle Lee Hamm, which left him bruised, bleeding and limping after a two-and-a-half hour attempt
On Thursday, February 22, three executions in three different states were scheduled, with three very different outcomes. Eric Branch was executed in Florida, dying with
The U.S. Supreme Court late last month stayed the execution of Vernon Madison, less than an hour before it was to take place on January
Kevin Cooper has been on San Quentin’s death row for 33 years for a quadruple murder he didn’t commit. As we reported in the January
Three states inched closer to repealing their death penalty laws this year. Washington, Utah, and New Hampshire have been debating repeal bills in the most
In Ohio, Alva Campbell was found dead in his cell at Chillicothe Correctional Institution last Saturday, four months after he was removed from the state’s
Two-and-a-half years ago, Kevin Cooper’s lawyer, Norman Hile, submitted to Governor Jerry Brown a 235-page clemency petition, pleading for advanced DNA testing of evidence from the quadruple murder that sent Cooper to death row in 1985. The appeal garnered enormous support, from former American Bar Association President Paulette Brown and four California law school deans, to five of the original jurors who signed declarations expressing concerns about the case. Last
In terms of the criminal justice system, it can be argued that the most important locally elected official is the district attorney. So, in last month’s election, while many people focused their attention on House and Senate candidates, some of the most important races were at the local level. In California, the most significant – and surprising — development was the defeat of longtime San Bernardino County District Attorney Mike Ramos
Next Tuesday, 34-year-old Christopher Young is scheduled to be executed in Texas for the 2004 murder of a 55-year-old convenience store owner. Exactly three months later, on October 17, Ohio plans to execute 61-year-old Raymond Tibbetts for the 1997 murder of his 67-year-old landlord. Young is black, Tibbetts is white. Young was 22 years old when he was arrested for killing Hasmukhbhai Patel during a robbery. Tibbetts was 40 when
Last Friday, Japan executed doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara and his six followers, who had been sentenced to death for the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway that killed 13 people in 1995. And, while this killing shocked the Japanese people for its unprecedented scale, it was not a surprise for those who had been following the case. The transfer of the condemned prisoners to different prisons had indicated
Scott Dozier In Alabama, AL.com reports that eight death row prisoners are dropping their lawsuit challenging the state’s three-drug lethal injection method because they have decided to be executed by nitrogen hypoxia, which was approved as an execution method in March. “Because they’ve now opted to die by nitrogen hypoxia instead of lethal injection, their claims in the lawsuit are moot,” AL.com says. The story includes a statement by the Federal
In a New York Times op-ed, “What Happens When Prosecutors Break the Law?” defense attorney Nina Morrison focuses on the case of Suffolk County, New York prosecutor Glenn Kurtzrock who was found to have suppressed evidence in five murder cases, and in spite of being fired and having all five cases overturned, “hasn’t been charged with a single crime. Not fraud, not tampering with government records, not contempt of court.”
An American pharmaceutical company filed a lawsuit blocking Nevada’s scheduled execution of Scott Dozier on Wednesday. New Jersey-based Alvogen said the state had “illegitimately acquired” its product, midazolam, to use as one of the drugs in its new, untested, three-drug lethal injection cocktail. “Past attempts by other states to use the medicine in lethal injections have been extremely controversial, and have led to widespread concern that prisoners have been exposed
The son of the man whose life Christopher Young took 14 years ago has released a powerful video asking the State of Texas not to execute Chris this coming Tuesday. But in spite of his eloquence, and the compassion and forgiveness Mitesh Patel expresses, the TX Board of Pardons and Paroles rejected Chris Young’s clemency application by a vote of 6 to 0. It’s hard to believe not one person
In Louisiana in 1974, at the age of 16, Gary Tyler was sentenced to die for a crime he did not commit. He was arrested for allegedly shooting a white boy during racially-charged protests over school integration in St. Charles Parish, Louisiana. Convicted and sentenced to die by an all-white jury, he was, at the time, the youngest person on death row in the United States, and spent eight years