In a letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom sent last month, American Bar Association President Mary Smith expressed her organization’s “ongoing concerns regarding the case
“Texas remained an unfortunate outlier as just one of five states to carry out executions in 2023, leading the nation with eight people put to
Alabama executed Casey McWhorter earlier this month. He was convicted and sentenced to die in 1994 for the robbery and murder of Edward Lee Williams
“Whether you support capital punishment or oppose it, one thing is clear. Oklahoma’s system is so fundamentally flawed that we cannot know that someone who
In South Carolina, executions are on hold until at least February, when the supreme court will hold a hearing over a lawsuit filed by four
Late last month, Pennsylvania House Bill 999 to repeal the death penalty passed out of the Judiciary Committee on a vote of 15-10. It was
Texas killed 53-year-old Brent Ray Brewer by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville on November 9. And one week later, on November 16,
In Florida, a new law that would allow a person convicted of the rape of a minor to be sentenced to death went into effect
University of San Francisco School of Law professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever explained “Why California’s reinvestigation of an infamous quadruple murder case is
SB 94, which would allow judges to review death penalty and life-without-parole sentences for people who have been imprisoned for at least 20 years, passed the Senate Public Safety Committee earlier this month. It now moves to the Appropriations Committee. The cost savings would be enormous. Sen. Dave Cortese (D-San Jose), the bill’s sponsor, said in a news release that it would save the state “hundreds of millions of dollars
In his guest essay, “San Quentin Could Be the Future of Prisons in America,” in the New York Times, Bill Keller writes that “there are many ways to measure the disaster that is America’s prison system,” but the fact that “haunts” him the most is that of the 600,000 people released from prisons every year, “about three-quarters of those released from state prisons nationwide are arrested again within five years.”
The State of Florida killed Louis Gaskin on Wednesday. The state has now killed more than 100 people since the death penalty was reinstated in 1972. Gaskin had severe mental illness. He was born to a teenage mother addicted to drugs. Because of her inability to care for him, he was moved between various family members, subject to abuse and neglect, and never lived in a stable environment. He dressed
“After thorough and serious deliberation, I have concluded that I cannot stand behind the murder conviction and death sentence of Richard Glossip,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced Thursday. And he asked the state Court of Criminal Appeals “to vacate Glossip’s conviction and that the case be remanded to the district court.” Drummond filed the motion three days after he received a report from the special counsel he appointed in
For the third time since 2019, the Texas House of Representatives passed a bill barring the death penalty for people with severe mental illness. The bill now goes to the state senate, where two similar bills have been defeated. “I believe that the third time is the charm,” the Texas Tribune quoted the bill’s sponsor, Dallas Democratic Rep. Toni Rose, as saying on the House floor during debate. HB 727
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has filed a motion with the state Court of Criminal Appeals to postpone Richard Glossip’s May 18 execution to August 2024, the Oklahoman reports. This is the second time this year and the ninth time since Glossip was sentenced to death in 1997 for the murder of Barry Van Treese that his execution has been postponed. According to the Oklahoman, Drummond stated that the delay
(Update: Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and the Arizona Supreme Court ended a standoff over the execution of Aaron Gunches on Wednesday, after this story was posted. The Court issued an order stating that its role, according to a state statute, is to “issue a warrant of execution that authorizes the director of the state department of corrections to carry out the execution.” Since it authorizes, but doesn’t mandate, Gov. Hobbs
“It is not for nothing that some critics refer to it as the ‘criminal legal system.’ The word ‘justice’ must be earned, and too often, our system falls short,” the LA Times Editorial Board wrote earlier this month. The board highlighted four wrongful conviction cases as examples of how the system falls short, including Maurice Hastings’, who was imprisoned for 38 years for a crime he didn’t commit. Hastings, who
“I was haunted by Russ before I even knew him. I tried to wrap my mind around what it was like to sit across from a human being and communicate and interact with them knowing that in a few hours, they’re going to have 2200 volts of electricity shot through them,” says Todd Peppers. “Russ” is the Reverend Russ Ford, the former head chaplain on Virginia’s death row. (Virginia abolished
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