Kevin Cooper has been on San Quentin’s death row for 33 years for a quadruple murder he didn’t commit. As we reported in the January
Three states inched closer to repealing their death penalty laws this year. Washington, Utah, and New Hampshire have been debating repeal bills in the most
In Ohio, Alva Campbell was found dead in his cell at Chillicothe Correctional Institution last Saturday, four months after he was removed from the state’s
In his article, “When Can You Buy a Gun, Vote, or Be Sentenced to Death? Science Suggests U.S. Should Revise Legal Age Limits”, in The
The State of Michigan is the only state to have a death penalty ban in its constitution. That ban was enshrined 116 years after the
February 14, 2018 The Honorable Edmund G. Brown Governor State of California State Capitol, Suite 1173 Sacramento, CA 95814 Dear Governor Brown, We
A federal judge told Alabama prison officials on Tuesday to preserve all evidence related to last week’s botched execution of Doyle Lee Hamm, CNN reported.
Minutes before he was scheduled to be executed, Thomas Whitaker’s sentence was commuted to life without parole yesterday by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. In a
Today, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously to recommend clemency for Thomas Whitaker. Whitaker is scheduled to be executed on Thursday for
In Georgia, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit declined to hear an appeal by Keith Tharpe that he was sentenced to death because he is African-American, saying he must first present the issue to state courts. In January, the U.S. Supreme Court directed the appeals court to review his sentence after his lawyers presented a post-verdict interview with one of Tharpe’s jurors in which he referred to
A collection of the writings of the late Rabbi Leonard Beerman, edited by David N.. Myers, can be found in The Eternal Dissident: Rabbi Leonard I. Beerman and the Radical Imperative to Think and Act, which will be released on May 16. (A free ebook version will also be available through Luminos at publication.) Rabbi Beerman, who was one of the founders of Death Penalty Focus, was considered one of
One year ago, we wrote about the case of Walter Ogrod, a man whom many believe was wrongfully convicted of killing four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn in Philadelphia in 1988. He was sent to death row in 1996, in spite of the fact it took four years for police to arrest him, there was no physical evidence or eyewitness identification, and that Ogrod, who is on the autism spectrum disorder, signed
It’s no secret that there are some very talented men and women on death rows around the country. We’ve published some of their works here in the past and we have some new work we’d like to share. This poem was written by Steven Nelson, who is on death row in Texas. He has been corresponding with two lovely women in France for the past two years, and recently sent
This week, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill joining Oklahoma and Mississippi in allowing officials to execute prisoners using nitrogen gas, a new, untested, untried method of killing women and men – or, as Oklahoma State Representative Mike Christian refers to them, “these beasts.” Let that sink in for a moment, if you will. . . . Mr. Christian’s new law makes Oklahoma one of three states that may
A new poll conducted by Quinnipiac University finds that American voters choose life without parole over the death penalty 51-37 percent, the first time a majority chose life over death since the poll first asked the question in 2004. By a much wider margin, 71-21 percent, voters say they are opposed to the death penalty for opioid drug dealers, a proposal endorsed by Donald Trump. But while these poll numbers
Anthony Ray Hinton spent 30 years on Alabama’s death row for a crime he didn’t commit. He was exonerated and freed in April 2015. The Equal Justice Initiative, which appealed his case for years, says that Ray, which is the name he goes by, was “One of the longest-serving death row prisoners in Alabama history and among the longest-serving condemned prisoners to be freed after presenting evidence of innocence.” He
Tomorrow, on the three-week anniversary of the botched execution of Doyle Lee Hamm, which left him bruised, bleeding and limping after a two-and-a-half hour attempt by corrections officials to kill him, Alabama will try to execute another prisoner. AL.com reports that Michael Wayne Eggers is scheduled to be executed Thursday for the December 2000 murder of Bennie Francis Murray during the course of a kidnapping and robbery. AL.com says his
On Thursday, February 22, three executions in three different states were scheduled, with three very different outcomes. Eric Branch was executed in Florida, dying with what eyewitnesses described as a “blood-curdling” scream. Doyle Lee Hamm was “tortured” for two-and-a-half hours in Alabama, his lawyer said, before officials gave up and left him “bruised, punctured, and limping from the attempted execution.” And Thomas Whitaker endured the full execution procedure right up