William Morva suffers from delusional disorder, a disease that makes him believe things that aren’t true. It’s a serious mental illness, similar to schizophrenia, and
Sen. Bernie Sanders, Joan Baez, legendary defense attorneys Judy Clarke and Thomas H. Speedy Rice were honored last weekend at the Death Penalty Focus 26th
”Many of the findings of the Commission’s year-long investigation were disturbing and led Commission members to question whether the death penalty can be administered in
“Excessive bail shall not be required, or excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted,” says the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. You
The state’s high court announced Thursday that it will hear oral argument in Briggs v. Brown, the lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 66, which
Three events in the last few weeks are indicative of the turmoil still surrounding the death penalty in Florida. When the Florida Supreme Court acquitted
In Alabama on Thursday, the state Senate voted 26-3 to approve a bill already passed by the House that supporters say will trim years off
In Philadelphia on Tuesday, a civil rights lawyer, who is opposed to the death penalty, has never worked as a prosecutor, and has defended Black
The California Supreme Court’s decision last month to uphold Proposition 66, possibly green-lighting the resumption of executions in the state, was not surprising, but it was, as the LA Times said in an editorial, “Terribly depressing.” California hasn’t executed anyone in more than 10 years, and to resume now is to revert to a method of punishment that is so barbaric, it is, as so frequently noted, no longer practiced
In two weeks, Scott Dekraai, who confessed to killing eight people and wounding another in October 2011, in the worst mass killing in Orange County history, will be sentenced to eight consecutive life terms. And, with that sentence, Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals will end a six-year legal nightmare for many of the victims’ family members, who have pleaded with prosecutors to accept the defense offer of a
Mark James Asay was executed in Florida late last month, the first execution in the state since January 2016, when the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Hurst v. Florida put its death penalty scheme in turmoil. Asay was sentenced to death for killing Robert Booker, a black man, and Robert McDowell, who was Latino, in 1987. It was the first time Florida has executed a white man for killing a
Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens issued a stay of execution late last month for Marcellus Williams based on new DNA evidence. The stay was issued hours before Williams was scheduled to die by lethal injection. At the same time, the governor announced the creation of a new five-person Board of Inquiry, which will review Williams’s case, and make a recommendation as to whether he should be granted clemency. Williams was scheduled
In Ohio, 45-year-old Gary Otte is scheduled to be executed next Wednesday for two murders in 1992. Otte’s lawyers are challenging both the state’s lethal injection method and the constitutionality of its death penalty scheme in two separate appeals. They argue that Ohio’s use of midazolam is unconstitutional because corrections officials can’t prove that the drug is preventing the inmate from suffering serious pain, and that because Otte was under
John T. Thorngren is 76 years old, and has had three heart attacks and two open heart surgeries. But he had one last item on his “bucket list”: to finish a book he started seven years ago about convicted murderer, Pamela Perillo, who spent 20 years on death row in Texas before her sentence was commuted to life in prison. He succeeded; “Salvation on Death Row” will be released in
In a guest editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Stephen Cooper calls on Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who late last month stayed the execution of Marcellus Williams, not only to commute Williams’s sentence to life without parole, but that of every condemned inmate in Missouri, and declare a moratorium on the death penalty. “The history of the death penalty in America is hewn from the hell of slavery, subjugation and
The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 66, which will radically change the state’s current death penalty law, and will most likely open the door for executions to resume after a 10-year hiatus. Today’s decision was the result of a lawsuit brought by former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp and Ron Briggs, and filed on their behalf by the law firm Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe immediately after Prop
A Kentucky Circuit Judge ruled last week that it is unconstitutional to sentence to death a defendant who is under the age of 21. He issued his decision after attorneys for Travis Bredhold, who is accused of killing a gas station attendant when he was just over the age of 18, asked him to exclude the death penalty when he goes to trial. “Retribution is not proportional if the law’s