The execution of Donald Dillbeck
February 27, 2023
Florida corrections officials killed Donald Dillbeck last Thursday. They did so despite the extensive evidence of his horrific sexual and physical abuse as a child,
Florida corrections officials killed Donald Dillbeck last Thursday. They did so despite the extensive evidence of his horrific sexual and physical abuse as a child,
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
“Justice Department standards on federal death penalty called confusing,” was the headline in a recent Washington Post article. The paper interviewed federal defense lawyers and
The Death Penalty Information Center reports that the first state killing this year occurred on January 3, when Missouri executed Amber McLaughlin. Texas followed one
The State of Texas plans to execute Andre Thomas on April 5. Throughout his life, Thomas sought treatment for his severe mental illness symptoms, including
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced earlier this month that he will not sign any execution warrants while he is in office; he will continue the
A poll commissioned by Oklahoma Conservatives Concerned About the Death Penalty, released last week, shows that 78% of Oklahoma voters support a moratorium on the
In an effort to “remedy cases where there have been miscarriages of justice,” California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta announced earlier this month that he is
Stephen Stanko, scheduled to be killed by the State of South Carolina later this month, is opting for lethal injection over the firing squad because he is “troubled by what appeared to be a lingering death of the last person in the state who was killed by firing squad,” his lawyers said in court filings, the Washington Post reported. Stanko is set to be killed on June 13 and was
Texas, Indiana, and Tennessee will each execute a person this week: two men will be killed on Tuesday and one man on Thursday. Texas, which has already executed three people this year, plans to kill Matthew Johnson on Tuesday by lethal injection. Johnson was convicted of killing Nancy Harris, a convenience store clerk, during a robbery in 2012. According to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Johnson was
The State of South Carolina killed Brad Sigmon earlier this month. The 67-year-old Sigmon was seated in a chair with a hood over his head and a target pinned over his heart as a firing squad of three people aimed at him and fired their rifles. His death “was horrifying and violent,” Gerald “Bo” King, one of Sigmon’s attorneys, told CNN after witnessing the execution. Sigmon’s firing squad execution is
If things go as planned, South Carolina will kill Brad Sigmon on Friday by firing squad. It will be the state’s first execution by shooting in its history. The 67-year-old Sigmon chose a firing squad over the state’s two alternative options: electrocution (the default method) or lethal injection. Sigmon’s lawyer told NBC News that just the fact that Sigmon had to choose how to be killed “is horrifying.” Sigmon was
Like many of you, we’re shocked at President Trump’s executive order, “Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety,” and believe it is a publicity stunt based on his usual rhetoric of fear and hatred. His intention is to reverse the progress that has been made in slowing down and, in some places, ending the killing of those imprisoned by the state. But knowledge is power. We know that the
President Biden commuted the death sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row today, declining to commute the sentences of Robert D. Bowers, convicted of killing 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018; Dylann Roof, who shot and killed nine Black parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015 and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who, with his brother, killed three people and
California Gov. Gavin Newsom “has demonstrated a callous disregard for the dark history” of the use of solitary confinement in the state’s prisons and jails, Jack Morris writes in his powerful CalMatters essay Morris points to Newsom’s two-time veto of of the California Mandela Act in 2022 and 2023, which would have limited the practice, and again this year when he killed AB280, which would have limited solitary confinement to
Curtis Lee Ervin was sentenced to death in 1991 for the murder-for-hire of Carlene McDonald in 1986. Late last month, Federal Judge Vince Chhabria, at the request of California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who “conceded that a Batson violation occurred” in Ervin’s case, ruled that Ervin should either be released or retried within 60 days. Ervin, now 71, has been on death row for 33 years. His case is one
A woman incarcerated at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla died earlier this month during a heat wave that sent Chowchilla’s temperatures over 111 degrees during the Fourth of July weekend, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Elizabeth Nomura, an organizer with the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, told the Chronicle that her organization had received “distressing” messages from several women at the prison, who reported temperatures over 95 degrees
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