Oklahoma Pardon & Parole Board denies Glossip clemency
Not even the unprecedented presence of Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who attended the hearing to advocate for clemency for Richard Glossip, was enough to
Not even the unprecedented presence of Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who attended the hearing to advocate for clemency for Richard Glossip, was enough to
SB 94, which would allow judges to review death penalty and life-without-parole sentences for people who have been imprisoned for at least 20 years, passed
In his guest essay, “San Quentin Could Be the Future of Prisons in America,” in the New York Times, Bill Keller writes that “there are
“It is not for nothing that some critics refer to it as the ‘criminal legal system.’ The word ‘justice’ must be earned, and too often,
“I was haunted by Russ before I even knew him. I tried to wrap my mind around what it was like to sit across from
In Texas, corrections officials executed two men this month, Gary Green and Arthur Brown, Jr. Texas has killed five men this year. With last week’s
A state district judge withdrew the April 5 execution warrant for Andre Thomas earlier this month to give Thomas’s lawyers time to prepare for a
Declaring that he wants to “literally transform this place,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced last week that San Quentin State Prison will convert from a
Former Death Penalty Focus board member Donald Spoto died earlier this month. He was 81. His death from a brain hemorrhage was announced by his
Patrick Crusius, who pleaded guilty in February to killing 23 people and injuring 22 others at an El Paso Walmart store, was sentenced early this month to 90 consecutive life terms, the U.S. Department of Justice reported. Crusius was charged with 90 federal counts, including 45 hate crimes, in a shooting rampage in August 2019. According to the grand jury indictment, two months before the attack, he bought an assault
“If you take away the arguments about cost, deterrence, and closure, what’s left other than a call for vengeance?” the Idaho Statesman asks in an editorial debunking common — erroneous —arguments conservatives use to justify their support for state killing. The paper points to Idaho’s plan to spend $750,000 to build a facility for firing squads to kill people in the wake of a new state law authorizing that method
The State of Alabama killed James Barber last Friday, its first execution since Gov. Kay Ivey called for a temporary halt in November after the state had botched three executions in a row. All three resulted from corrections officials’ inability to insert IV lines for the lethal drugs. On July 28, the execution team tried for three hours to insert IV lines into Joe Nathan James, Jr., and an independent
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to vacate Richard Glossip’s 1997 capital murder conviction and return his case to a district court. In May, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution for Glossip two weeks before he was scheduled to be killed. In a news release, Drummond said he filed a brief in support of Glossip’s petition for a writ of certiorari on
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied Rodney Reed’s petition for a new trial in the murder conviction that sent him to death row 25 years ago. The ruling surprised many as it came four years after the high court issued a stay of execution for Reed five days before he was scheduled to be killed. In the 7-1 decision, the TCCA found that “Reed has failed to make an
In Oklahoma, Anthony Sanchez, on death row for 27 years, told CBS News in a telephone interview that he will reject his opportunity for a clemency hearing because of the unlikelihood it would be granted. CBS said Sanchez, now 44, pointed to the recent cases of Bigler Stouffer and James Coddington, both of whom received clemency recommendations from the Pardon and Parole Board only to have Gov. Kevin Stitt reject
Not even pleas from the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops were enough to persuade Gov. Ron DeSantis to commute Duane Owen’s death sentence and spare his life. Continuing his zeal for state killing, DeSantis gave the go-ahead for Owen to be executed on June 15, despite credible evidence that Owen was not mentally competent. “Tonight’s execution was the fourth in an execution spree fueled solely by political ambition. Tonight we
Two men, Barry Jones in Arizona and Lamont Hunter in Ohio, walked off death row the same day earlier this month, each wrongly convicted of first-degree murder of a child in their care. Barry Jones, sentenced to death in Arizona in 1995 for the murder of his girlfriend’s four-year-old daughter, Rachel, was released June 15 after Pima County Attorney Laura Conover issued a statement admitting that “medical re-examination of the
“Black-led organizations are working to stop the spread of legislation reinstating the death penalty” in “a response to a resurgence of legislation in states controlled by Republicans that seek to step up the use” of capital punishment, The Hill reported. The paper cites states including Tennessee, Florida, which would make it easier to sentence defendants to death, and New Jersey and Illinois, that are considering reinstating the death penalty, as