Florida to begin executions again
August 11, 2017
After an 18-month hiatus following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hurst v. Florida decision, Florida is gearing up to begin executions again. Yesterday, the Florida Supreme
After an 18-month hiatus following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hurst v. Florida decision, Florida is gearing up to begin executions again. Yesterday, the Florida Supreme
Ohio executed its first inmate in three-and-a-half years late last month, using a new three-drug protocol, including midazolam, rocuronium bromide, and potassium chloride. Forty-five-year-old Ronald
“There is no justification for executing the insane, and no reasoned support for it, as only a glance at the brief of amici—filed by able
In Texas, TaiChin Preyor was executed late last month, after his appeal was denied by the U.S. Supreme Court. Preyor, who was convicted of the
“To spend 20 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit, and emerge with his humanity and dignity intact … to spend 20 years, day in and day out, fighting for his freedom, it was just so extraordinary. It was totally compelling.”
A petition drive that was started by five men exonerated from Ohio’s death row culminated today with the delivery of 100 thousand signatures to the
A diverse group of death penalty opponents held a news conference at the state capitol in Ohio on Wednesday to ask Gov. John Kasich to
Scharlette Holdman, who died last week, was renowned in the criminal justice world as one of the foremost death penalty mitigation specialists in the country.
“The execution of a man suffering from severe mental illness is an act of particular barbarism — especially if his condition may have been misdiagnosed
There are a number of free events in Southern California celebrating the movement to exonerate the wrongfully convicted.
The California Supreme Court’s decision last month to uphold Proposition 66, possibly green-lighting the resumption of executions in the state, was not surprising, but it was, as the LA Times said in an editorial, “Terribly depressing.” California hasn’t executed anyone in more than 10 years, and to resume now is to revert to a method of punishment that is so barbaric, it is, as so frequently noted, no longer practiced
In two weeks, Scott Dekraai, who confessed to killing eight people and wounding another in October 2011, in the worst mass killing in Orange County history, will be sentenced to eight consecutive life terms. And, with that sentence, Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals will end a six-year legal nightmare for many of the victims’ family members, who have pleaded with prosecutors to accept the defense offer of a
Mark James Asay was executed in Florida late last month, the first execution in the state since January 2016, when the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Hurst v. Florida put its death penalty scheme in turmoil. Asay was sentenced to death for killing Robert Booker, a black man, and Robert McDowell, who was Latino, in 1987. It was the first time Florida has executed a white man for killing a
Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens issued a stay of execution late last month for Marcellus Williams based on new DNA evidence. The stay was issued hours before Williams was scheduled to die by lethal injection. At the same time, the governor announced the creation of a new five-person Board of Inquiry, which will review Williams’s case, and make a recommendation as to whether he should be granted clemency. Williams was scheduled
In Ohio, 45-year-old Gary Otte is scheduled to be executed next Wednesday for two murders in 1992. Otte’s lawyers are challenging both the state’s lethal injection method and the constitutionality of its death penalty scheme in two separate appeals. They argue that Ohio’s use of midazolam is unconstitutional because corrections officials can’t prove that the drug is preventing the inmate from suffering serious pain, and that because Otte was under
John T. Thorngren is 76 years old, and has had three heart attacks and two open heart surgeries. But he had one last item on his “bucket list”: to finish a book he started seven years ago about convicted murderer, Pamela Perillo, who spent 20 years on death row in Texas before her sentence was commuted to life in prison. He succeeded; “Salvation on Death Row” will be released in
In a guest editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Stephen Cooper calls on Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who late last month stayed the execution of Marcellus Williams, not only to commute Williams’s sentence to life without parole, but that of every condemned inmate in Missouri, and declare a moratorium on the death penalty. “The history of the death penalty in America is hewn from the hell of slavery, subjugation and
The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 66, which will radically change the state’s current death penalty law, and will most likely open the door for executions to resume after a 10-year hiatus. Today’s decision was the result of a lawsuit brought by former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp and Ron Briggs, and filed on their behalf by the law firm Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe immediately after Prop