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
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
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
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
(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
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
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 seek the death penalty and, in addition, “will not seek an execution date for any person sentenced to death. . . . will not defend existing death sentences and will engage in a thorough review of every existing death penalty judgment from Los Angeles County
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 month. He is the 194th person exonerated from death row since 1973, the Death Penalty Information Center reported. Jesse Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death for killing Harriet Lavern Thompson in Salem in March 1998. He maintained his innocence from the time he was
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
