In brief: October 2024
October 28, 2024
In Florida, a jury recommended a life without parole sentence for Corey Binderim for the murder of 65-year-old Susan Mauldin in a 7-5 vote, one
In Florida, a jury recommended a life without parole sentence for Corey Binderim for the murder of 65-year-old Susan Mauldin in a 7-5 vote, one
When Gov. John Carney signed Delaware House Bill 70 late last month, he officially repealed Delaware’s death penalty, the final act in a process that
Eight states have killed 20 people so far this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/stories/outcomes-of-death-warrants-in-2024 .* Seven more people are scheduled to
Robert Roberson was sentenced to death in 2003, convicted by a jury that believed his daughter, Nikki, had died from shaken baby syndrome. That diagnosis
Joseph Giarratano, who spent 38 years in a Virginia prison, 13 of them on death row, for a crime he didn’t commit, died on October
In their essay “Sacred Victims: Fifty Years of Data on Victim Race and Sex as Predictors of Execution,” in the Journal of Criminal Law and
In California, The state legislature approved state Sen. Nancy Skinner’s bill, SB 254, which would restore news media access to California prisons. The bill would
The National Security Agency released a 74-year-old previously classified document “confirming that the U.S. government knew that Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy long before her
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced last month that the state plans to kill three people in the next three months. Alan Miller is scheduled
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
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContact: Mary Kate DeLucco415-243-0143mary@deathpenalty.org– Sacramento, CA – Jun 21, 2023 – Rebuttal to Special Counsel’s Report on Kevin Cooper Case Submitted to Governor Newsom Attorneys representing Kevin Cooper have recently submitted a detailed rebuttal to the Special Counsel’s report concerning Mr. Cooper’s capital murder conviction. This development follows the January 13, 2023, report by the Special Counsel, which was a response to California Governor Gavin Newsom’s May 2021
Three months ago, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards told an audience at Loyola University that he supported abolishing the state’s death penalty because it’s “so final. When you make a mistake, you can’t get it back. And we know that mistakes have been made in sentencing people to death,” according to nola.com. Now, 51 of the 57 people on Louisiana’s death row are asking Bel Edwards, whose term is up
“I am holding tightly to my faith. It’s all I have left to take with me. I am sorry it had to come to this in this way. I wish I could have made things right while I was still here,” Michael Tisius wrote in his last statement before the state of Missouri killed him earlier this month. Tisius was just 19 when he shot and killed two county jail
Florida’s Catholic bishops are urging Gov. Ron DeSantis to grant a stay of execution to Duane Owen, and commute his sentence to life without parole, Crux, an independent news service that covers the Vatican and the Catholic Church, reports. Owen, sentenced to death for two separate murders, Karen Slattery, and Georgianna Worden, in 1984, is scheduled to be killed June 15. “Taking Mr. Owen’s life will not restore the lives
“Tonight, by killing Darryl Barwick, we the People of the State of Florida also killed the belief that redemption matters. That remorse matters. That people, especially those who are sentenced to die as teenagers, are capable of change. This execution cements the short-sighted notion that people are irrevocably defined by the worst thing they have ever done,” Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty Executive Director Maria DeLiberato, wrote after
(This post was updated on June 1, 2023.) In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis withdrew a hold on the June 15 death warrant for Duane Owen, Flaglerlive.com reported. On May 22, DeSantis issued a temporary stay of execution and appointed three psychiatrists to assess Owen’s mental competence. According to Flaglerlive, DeSantis said the psychiatrists found that Owen ” has the mental capacity to understand the nature of the death penalty and
As originally written, California’s SB 94 would have allowed judges to review death and life-without-parole sentences for people imprisoned for at least 20 years. The Senate passed the bill last week with 22 votes, one vote more than needed, sending it to the Assembly, but not without significant amendments. It is now limited to those individuals serving a sentence of life without parole who have been imprisoned for 25 years