“Amnesty International’s monitoring shows that in 2023 the lowest number of countries on record carried out the highest number of known executions in close to
“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
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
The U.S. Supreme Court denied an appeal from San Quentin prison officials to grant them immunity from lawsuits stemming from a COVID-19 outbreak at the
In a speech delivered in Rome in October 2017, Pope Francis told the crowd that “No matter how serious the crime that has been committed,
In 1980, when Larry Roberts was 27 and serving a life sentence at the California Medical Center in Vacaville for killing a high school security
An Alameda County man who was sentenced to death in 2005 for the murder and robbery of Lorin Gwynne Germaine in 1986 is challenging his
We were happy so many of you were able to attend our 32nd Annual Awards Dinner earlier this month at the Skirball Center in Los
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Tuesday signed into law a bill that will allow a person to be sentenced to death for the rape of
“I am holding tightly to my faith. It’s all I have left to take with me. I am sorry it had to come to this in this way. I wish I could have made things right while I was still here,” Michael Tisius wrote in his last statement before the state of Missouri killed him earlier this month. Tisius was just 19 when he shot and killed two county jail
Florida’s Catholic bishops are urging Gov. Ron DeSantis to grant a stay of execution to Duane Owen, and commute his sentence to life without parole, Crux, an independent news service that covers the Vatican and the Catholic Church, reports. Owen, sentenced to death for two separate murders, Karen Slattery, and Georgianna Worden, in 1984, is scheduled to be killed June 15. “Taking Mr. Owen’s life will not restore the lives
“Tonight, by killing Darryl Barwick, we the People of the State of Florida also killed the belief that redemption matters. That remorse matters. That people, especially those who are sentenced to die as teenagers, are capable of change. This execution cements the short-sighted notion that people are irrevocably defined by the worst thing they have ever done,” Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty Executive Director Maria DeLiberato, wrote after
(This post was updated on June 1, 2023.) In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis withdrew a hold on the June 15 death warrant for Duane Owen, Flaglerlive.com reported. On May 22, DeSantis issued a temporary stay of execution and appointed three psychiatrists to assess Owen’s mental competence. According to Flaglerlive, DeSantis said the psychiatrists found that Owen ” has the mental capacity to understand the nature of the death penalty and
As originally written, California’s SB 94 would have allowed judges to review death and life-without-parole sentences for people imprisoned for at least 20 years. The Senate passed the bill last week with 22 votes, one vote more than needed, sending it to the Assembly, but not without significant amendments. It is now limited to those individuals serving a sentence of life without parole who have been imprisoned for 25 years
There are no death penalty cases on the California Supreme Court’s late-May calendar, the Horvitz & Levy blog At the Lectern notes, and points out that the last time the Court heard an automatic capital appeal was in February. The blog finds it interesting because after the Court upheld Proposition 66 in 2017, it stated that the initiative’s deadlines for court action on capital cases “must be deemed directive rather
Early this month, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that would allow a person convicted of the rape of a minor to be sentenced to death. The bill establishes a minimum sentence of life without parole. The new law defies the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Kennedy v. Louisiana (2008), which found that “the Eighth Amendment categorically rules out the death penalty in even the most extreme cases of
Last Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Richard Glossip a stay of execution to give the Court time to review two pending petitions. Glossip was scheduled to be executed by Oklahoma on May 18. The stay doesn’t eliminate the possibility that the state will abandon its attempt to kill Glossip, who was sentenced to death in 1997, convicted of engineering the murder of Barry Van Treese, the owner of an
In Texas, a district court judge withdrew the April 26 execution date for Ivan Cantu. CBS Texas reports that the postponement was granted to give more time to review Cantu’s claims that he was convicted in 2001 based on false testimony and questionable evidence. Cantu was sentenced to death for the 2000 killings of his cousin, 27-year-old James Mosqueda, and his cousin’s girlfriend, 22-year-old Amy Kitchen, during a robbery. In
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