While we’re on the subject . . . .
May 27, 2025
“The cruelest aspect of executions is the restraints,” chief federal public defender Bo King writes in an op-ed in USA Today. King was Brad Sigmon’s
“The cruelest aspect of executions is the restraints,” chief federal public defender Bo King writes in an op-ed in USA Today. King was Brad Sigmon’s
In Arkansas, Bruce Ward, on the state’s death row longer than any other person, died of natural causes earlier this month, KARK.com reported. The 68-year-old
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest court for criminal cases, ordered last month that a death sentence for a man convicted 27
Last Friday, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed his seventh death warrant this year, breaking his record of six death warrants in 2023. The state has
Last year, there were 25 executions in the United States, the highest number since 2020. This year, there have been 19 executions, with 10 more
California’s Racial Justice Act, passed in 2020, states that the “state shall not seek or obtain a criminal conviction or seek, obtain, or impose a
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
In “Kennedy v. Louisiana and the Future of the Eighth Amendment” in the Pepperdine Law Review, Washington and Lee University assistant law Professor Alexandra L.
In Louisiana, a district judge set aside the conviction and death sentence of a man convicted of killing his girlfriend’s 23-month-old daughter in 1998 because
Because it doesn’t have access to lethal injection drugs, Ohio’s last execution was in 2018. And now, a group of bipartisan legislators has introduced a House bill, a companion piece to a pending Senate bill, to abolish capital punishment altogether. But, according to WTGV-13, while sponsors say they have more support this year than they have previously, “Senate President Matt Huffman, who controls what gets put up for a vote
The Tennessee Criminal Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court ruling that Pervis Payne, who spent 34 years on Tennessee’s death row before being resentenced to life in prison last year, can serve his two life sentences concurrently, the Commercial Appeal reported. The ruling, issued late last month, means Payne will be eligible for parole in less than four years. Payne, now 54, was sentenced to death in 1988
In Alabama last week, where corrections officials botched three executions in a row last year because of the execution team’s inability to insert IV lines for lethal drugs, Attorney General Steve Marshall asked the state Supreme Court last week to set an execution date for Kenneth Smith and indicated the state plans to kill Smith by nitrogen hypoxia. Smith’s execution was called off last November after the state repeatedly failed
Gerald Pizzuto, Jr., has been on Idaho’s death row since his 1986 conviction of the murders of Berta Herndon and her nephew Del Herndon in 1985. He is 66 years old, dependent on a wheelchair, diabetic, and on hospice care because of advanced bladder cancer. He suffers from the effects of repeated brain injuries and the horrific consequences of the sexual and physical abuse he suffered when he was a
“It’s quite horrifying — as it’s intended to be,” is how the spiritual advisor who was in the death chamber with Michael Tisius when the State of Missouri killed him last month describes the experience of witnessing the state kill one of its citizens. In an interview with Flatland, the Rev. Melissa Potts Bowers describes the process as both “bizarre” and a “one-man show” [whose] “murder is the highlight of
Florida plans to continue its frantic pace of executions. The state announced it will kill Michael Duane Zack III in October, its sixth execution this year. It will be the eighth state killing since Gov Ron DeSantis, a presidential candidate who has expanded the state’s death penalty laws, was first elected in 2019. Zack, 55, was sentenced to death for the murder of Ravonne Smith in 1996. He is also
Aba Gayle, who became a passionate opponent of the death penalty after her 19-year-old daughter, Catherine Blount, was murdered, died in Silverton, Oregon, in late June. She was 89. Aba Gayle’s (her preferred moniker) daughter, Catherine, and her friend, 29-year-old Eric Hanson, were killed in Placer County, California, in September 1980. Douglas Mickey, an acquaintance of the couple, was convicted of the murders in 1983 and sentenced to death. For
A federal jury in Pittsburgh sentenced Robert Bowers to death earlier this month for his October 2018 attack on the Tree of Life synagogue that left 11 congregants dead and six others wounded. The jury had found Bowers guilty in June on 63 counts, including hate crimes resulting in death and obstruction of the free exercise of religion, charges that made him eligible for the death penalty. According to the
(This post was updated to reflect that Johnny Johnson was killed by the State of Missouri on Tuesday night.) The State of Missouri killed Johnny Johnson Tuesday night. The execution was the state’s fourth this year. He was killed by lethal injection for the 2002 kidnapping, attempted rape, and killing of six-year-old Casey Williamson in St. Louis. Johnson’s lawyers had argued that he was ineligible to be executed because of