Two men, one in Oregon and the other in Oklahoma, both initially sentenced to death, who spent a combined 73 years in prison, have been
At least two moderate criminal justice reform bills stalled in the California legislature this month, a surprising development in a state perceived to be so
Almost immediately after being elected Los Angeles County District Attorney in 2020, George Gascón issued a “Death Penalty Policy” promising that his office would not
A man who spent 17 years on Oregon’s death row and 25 years in custody for a crime he didn’t commit was freed earlier this
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
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
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
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
“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
“Does CDCR have solitary confinement?” is the first question on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s “restricted housing” webpage. The answer? “No.” That answer would surprise the thousands currently held in solitary confinement (CDCR uses the euphemism “restricted housing’) in California’s prisons and jails. (The United Nations Nelson Mandela Rules define solitary confinement, which it stipulates is torture, as locking a person in a cell with no meaningful human
In a 2-1 ruling, a state appeals court upheld California’s Racial Justice Act earlier this month. The law, which took effect in 2021, prohibits the state from seeking or obtaining a criminal conviction or from imposing a sentence based on race, ethnicity, or national origin. But it was prospective only, excluding judgments rendered before January 1, 2021. The Racial Justice Act for All, which was signed into law by Gov.
As of 2020, 12 states automatically housed death-sentenced people in indefinite solitary confinement, in violation of the UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules. The rules “restrict the use of solitary confinement as a measure of last resort, to be used only in exceptional circumstances.” Watch our thought-provoking and lively discussion on yet another example of how cruel, barbaric, and unjust capital punishment is. Our panelists, including DPF President Mike Farrell, former United
Scott Panetti, diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia 35 years ago, was convicted of killing his wife’s parents in 1992 and sentenced to death in 1995 in Texas. But late last month, U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman ruled that Panetti cannot be executed by the state because of his severe mental illness. “The Eighth Amendment demands more than a single thread of arguably rational thought in a sea of otherwise disorganized thoughts
The Intercept reports that four companies that manufacture medical equipment, including Baxter International Inc., B. Braun Medical Inc., Fresenius Kabi, and Johnson & Johnson, are refusing to sell their products for use in executions. The companies produce “IV catheters, syringes, medical tubing, and IV bags, products states rely on to administer lethal injection,” according to the Intercept. With death penalty states already scrambling to find lethal injection drugs, an inability
“Under the Eighth Amendment, execution by nitrogen is surely unusual because it has never been used as a method of execution in this country or elsewhere, as far as we know. It is also likely to cause needless agony and suffering in the execution chamber,” Bernard Harcourt writes in his New York Times op-ed, “Alabama Has a Horrible New Way of Killing People on Death Row.” Harcourt knows what cruel
Alabama South Carolina In Tennessee, the only woman on the state’s death row is asking to have her death sentence vacated. Christa Pike was 18 when she was sentenced in 1996, the youngest woman to be sent to death row in the United States since 1972. Her lawyers argue that last year’s ruling by the Tennessee Supreme Court in State v. Booker that mandatory life sentences for juveniles in homicide
Two men, one in Oregon and the other in Oklahoma, both initially sentenced to death, who spent a combined 73 years in prison, have been released in the past couple of months based on evidence of their innocence. Jesse Johnson Jesse Johnson, who spent 17 years on Oregon’s death row and 25 years in custody for a crime he didn’t commit, was freed earlier this month. He is the 194th
At least two moderate criminal justice reform bills stalled in the California legislature this month, a surprising development in a state perceived to be so progressive. California Assembly Bill 280 would have limited the time corrections officials could restrict those imprisoned in the state’s jails, prisons, and immigration centers in solitary confinement. Senate Bill 94 would have allowed judges to review life-without-parole sentences for people convicted of the offense before
