Four U.S. Senators introduced a bill this week that would allow federal prosecutors in death penalty cases to impanel a second jury for sentencing if
Texas executed John Battaglia last week, the third person executed this year, and the second of the week. The 62-year-old was sentenced to die in
Two years ago, we reported on the use of “ethnic adjustment” by prosecutors in death penalty cases, which artificially raises minority defendants’ IQ scores. In
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation released its revised lethal drug protocol late last month, and it doesn’t address the problems that plagued its
In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich granted a reprieve to Raymond Tibbetts, who was scheduled to be executed next Tuesday for the 1997 murder of his
In the March issue of Reason, reporter C.J. Ciaramella writes of how state officials have decided the “black hood of anonymity also covers the pharmacies
Nicola White is a London-based artist whose work is fashioned from the fragments of wood, glass, pottery, and other artifacts she finds on the banks
Bethany Webb, whose sister was killed and mother wounded in a mass shooting in Seal Beach, California in 2011, has not given up her crusade
Malcolm Alexander was convicted in New Orleans in 1980 of a rape in a case where the only evidence against him was the eyewitness identification
Scott Turow notes that “Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner seems to be one of the few people in Illinois who misses the death penalty” in an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune. Rauner recently proposed reinstating the death penalty for mass killers and those who kill law enforcement officials. Among the many reasons it would be a mistake to bring it back, Turow says, is that the plan to apply it in
Robert Lewis, Jr. is off California’s death row after 34 years. Yesterday, the California Supreme Court overturned Lewis’s death sentence, finding “substantial evidence” that he is intellectually disabled. The unanimous decision means the 65-year-old Lewis’s death sentence will be reduced to life without the possiblity of parole. Attorney Robert Sanger, who is a Death Penalty Focus board member, has been working on Lewis’s case since 1994. He said the court’s
“In 34 years at The New York Times, I’ve never come across a case in America as outrageous as Kevin Cooper’s.” That’s what NY Times reporter Nicholas Kristof wrote in his column today about Kevin Cooper and the stunning injustice of his case. We’ve written a lot about the travesty of Cooper’s case – how he was sent to San Quentin’s death row 23 years ago for a crime he
When Vicente Benavides walked out of San Quentin State Prison late last month, the first prisoner in recent memory to walk off California’s death row, there was a crowd of family, friends, and supporters waiting to greet him. Among them, two women who had been envisioning this day for almost 18 years — his lawyer, Cristina Bordé, and his investigator, Mara Tobis, both of whom were assigned his case when
What is a district attorney? The California primary elections will take place on June 5. There’s a lot at stake, in state and around the country. Not only will state and federal representatives be on the ballot, Californians will need to whittle down the candidate pools for attorney general and governor, two significant offices in administration of the death penalty system. On the local level, there are many important elections
The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided that Walter Leroy Moody wasn’t too old to be executed, but Russell Bucklew may be too sick. Moody was executed last month, April 19, in Alabama. He was 83 years old, the oldest prisoner executed in the United States since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. In 1991, Moody was convicted in federal court, and sentenced to seven concurrent life sentences and 400 years,
Late last month, the New Hampshire House and Senate voted to repeal the state’s death penalty and replace it with a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. It is the first time a Republican-controlled legislature has passed a repeal bill in that state. “Leadership came from the Republicans,” State Rep. Renny Cushing told DPF. “It’s thanks to a coalition of lawmakers who, for a variety of reasons, came
In Massachusetts, some Republicans are calling for reinstatement of the death penalty for the murder of law enforcement officials in the wake of the killing of a Yarmouth police officer last month. CBS Boston affiliate WBZ reports that the Republican Party tweeted its support for bringing back the death penalty for killing a police officer, and that an aide to Republican Gov. Charlie Baker has indicated he would support a
Living on Death Row examines the “psychology of waiting to die.” Edited by Hans Toch, James R. Acker and Vincent Martin Bonventre, the book presents analyses from psychologists, legal professionals, and criminologists, as well as first-person accounts from prison officials and death row prisoners, to “reveal the systemic, physical, and moral conditions that define and underlie death row, as well as the humanity of death row inmates who struggle to