World Day Against the Death Penalty 2018
October 12, 2018
Update: On October 10, 2018, the Malaysian government announced that the country will abolish the death penalty for all crimes. Around 1,200 people are on
Update: On October 10, 2018, the Malaysian government announced that the country will abolish the death penalty for all crimes. Around 1,200 people are on
California has the largest female death row in the U.S., with 23 condemned women imprisoned at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. Four women
In the words of Bob Dylan, “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.” The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, replacing
“The eighth amendment isn’t just a window. It’s a mirror. And what the Court has said is that our norms, our values are implicated when
(This is a developing story. We will continue to update it as events unfold.) Yesterday, just a few hours before Edmund Zagorski was scheduled to be executed,
Although court documents state that a member of the Oklahoma jury that sentenced Julius Jones to death for the July 1999 fatal shooting of 45-year-old Paul Howell
In his column, “Justice Delayed, With a Life on the Line,” in last Sunday’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof again writes about the case of Kevin
In North Carolina, the Center for Death Penalty Litigation released a report, “Unequal Justice: How Obsolete Laws and Unfair Trials Created North Carolina’s Outsized Death
Yesterday, the Washington supreme court acknowledged that the state’s death penalty scheme is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner and struck it down. The
On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in the case of 50-year-old Russell Bucklew, a Missouri death row prisoner who came within a few hours of his execution in March when the Court granted a stay, in a 5-4 decision, to give it time to study his appeal. Bucklew suffers from cavernous hemangioma, a rare medical condition that causes blood-filled tumors in his head, throat and lips. Because of
In Mississippi, a man who has been on death row for over 20 years, after being tried six times for a quadruple murder in 1996, will get a hearing in the U.S. Supreme Court. APM Reports, which has produced an 11-episode podcast on Flowers’ case, reports that the Court will review whether District Attorney Doug Evans deliberately excluded African-Americans from Flowers’ jury in each of his trials. In four of his
In his op-ed in the Fort Worth Star Telegram, “It’s Wrong for an Imperfect System to Impose an Irreversible Punishment,” former district attorney Tim Cole notes that two Texas counties, Tarrant and Dallas, are responsible for returning a combined 181 death sentences in the modern death penalty era — “more than any major metropolitan area in Texas except for Houston” — and says “district attorneys owe it to their constituents to
Tennessee’s nine-year break in executions ended in August when the state killed Billy Ray Irick by lethal injection. Last week, Edmund Zagorski was executed by electric chair, and David Earl Miller is scheduled to die next month. Tennessee’s machinery of death is back in operation, and it’s had a profound effect on the prisoners. “We’re on new ground and we’re trying to process it,” the Rev. Joseph Ingle says. “There’s
Edmund Zagorski was executed in Tennessee last night by electric chair, the first time in 11 years the state has used that method. The 63-year-old Zagorski had been on death row for 34 years for the April 1983 murder of two men, John Dotson and Jimmy Porter, during a drug deal. At the time of his sentencing, Tennessee didn’t have the option of a sentence of life without parole, and
When the state has gotten the go-ahead to execute a man by electrocuting him, it’s difficult to understand why they would fight a request by the prisoner’s attorney to have access to a phone during the execution. But that’s exactly what attorneys for the state are doing right now – arguing against a federal judge’s order to provide Edmund Zagorski’s attorney with access to a phone so she can communicate
It’s foolish to hope for any sort of measured or nuanced response from Donald Trump, but his thoughtless, knee-jerk, all-too-predictable immediate demand that the man accused of killing 11 people in a synagogue during Shabbat services last weekend be charged with the death penalty did nothing but inflame emotions and further poison our sick and violent society. As DPF President Mike Farrell said, “A president who refuses to recognize his own
The Tennessean has a story today on how the state will test the electric chair it will use to kill Edmund Zagorski next Thursday. The details are gruesome, and should compel every one of us to question what kind of society we live in that we would allow human beings to be executed by the state. Electrocution is a particularly barbaric way to kill someone, but make no mistake, there
The majority of Americans no longer believe the death penalty is applied fairly. For the first time since Gallup polled on this issue in 2000, 49 percent believe it is applied fairly. 45 percent say it’s applied unfairly. Gallup says the new low “reflects a gradual decline” over the past ten years, while the number who believe it is applied unfairly has been edging higher, “with this year’s four-point gap