In April, Alameda County (California) District Attorney Pamela Price announced that a federal district court judge had ordered the DA’s office to review all of
In his first interview since surviving a botched execution in Idaho in February, Thomas Creech tells the New York Times, “I was thinking the whole
In Texas, Ramiro Gonzales was killed by lethal injection Wednesday. The 41-year-old Gonzales was sentenced to death in 2006 for the sexual assault and murder
Last month, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes sent a letter to Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell, saying she will begin seeking execution warrants next year
Effective Monday, July 1, an individual convicted of the rape of a minor in Tennessee is eligible for the death penalty. SB 1663, signed by
Marcellus Williams is scheduled to be executed on September 24, despite the fact DNA evidence proves he did not kill Felicia Anne Gayle in 1998,
San Quentin’s infamous East Block, home to the largest death row in the United States, is now empty. As of May 28, 607 individuals have
In the days after his death of cardiac arrest on June 9 in Los Angeles, the Rev. James Morris Lawson, Jr., was described as “the
“Of course, the death penalty is racist. And it would be wrong even if it weren’t,” the Los Angeles Times stated in an editorial earlier
As of 2020, 12 states automatically housed death-sentenced people in indefinite solitary confinement, in violation of the UN’s Nelson Mandela Rules. The rules “restrict the use of solitary confinement as a measure of last resort, to be used only in exceptional circumstances.” Watch our thought-provoking and lively discussion on yet another example of how cruel, barbaric, and unjust capital punishment is. Our panelists, including DPF President Mike Farrell, former United
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
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