Trump plans to execute all 42 people on federal death row if reelected
May 9, 2024
Donald Trump is promising that if he is reelected in November, he will execute every one of the 42 men on federal death row. The
Donald Trump is promising that if he is reelected in November, he will execute every one of the 42 men on federal death row. 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
In this month’s Focus, we wrote about a writ petition a coalition of prominent civil rights and legal organizations filed at the CA Supreme Court
At least seven young men, all of whom were sentenced to death for so-called crimes committed when they were between the ages of 14-17 and
An in-depth study of botched lethal injection executions in the U.S. conducted by Reprieve, the London-based NGO that has spent the last 25 years defending
In Oklahoma, Michael Dewayne Smith was executed earlier this month. He was convicted of murdering Janet Moore, a 40-year-old mother, and Sharath Pulluru, a 24-year-old
CDCR says it has moved approximately 222 of the individuals on San Quentin’s death row to 20 prisons throughout the state since February 26, when
As many as 35 death penalty cases in California’s Alameda County from the past 30 years are under review after a deputy district attorney discovered
This week, a coalition of prominent civil rights and legal organizations filed a writ petition at the CA Supreme Court stating that “Extensive empirical evidence
In one week, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals denied two petitions filed by Richard Glossip for an evidentiary hearing to consider new evidence of innocence in his case. Glossip was scheduled to be killed on September 22. But Gov. Kevin Stitt stayed his execution until February 16, 2023, to allow time for the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to review his petitions for a new hearing. Both of those
In a bizarrely-worded statement, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey called for a temporary halt to executions last week. She announced the decision after corrections officials botched the failed execution of Kenneth Smith on November 17, the third execution this year that was botched and the fourth since 2018. (You can read a full account in the following article.) “For the sake of the victims and their families, we’ve got to get
“What has happened to Mr. Hastings is a terrible injustice,” Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón said at a news conference announcing Maurice Hastings’ release late last month. “The justice system is not perfect, and when we learn of new evidence which causes us to lose confidence in a conviction, it is our obligation to act swiftly.” Hastings, now 69, was sentenced to life without parole in 1988 for the
In Texas, Tracy Beatty was killed early last month despite valid questions about whether his crime qualified for the death penalty. Beatty was found guilty of strangling his mother, Carolyn Click, in 2003 after a violent argument. But, as the Texas Tribune reports, Texas law requires that to charge a defendant with capital murder, special circumstances must be involved, such as killing a police officer or committing the murder during
For the second time in two months, Alabama botched an execution. Corrections officials ended their attempt to kill Kenneth Smith on November 17 after trying and failing for over an hour to find a usable vein for its lethal drugs. On Friday, a judge granted Smith’s lawyers’ motion to preserve evidence of his injuries from the botched procedure. They asked that “documentation of his injuries and notes, records, photographs, videos,
The problems with Alabama’s July execution of Joe Nathan James, Jr., during which it took the execution team three hours to kill him because of their difficulty finding a usable vein for the lethal injection drugs, make it clear that the men and women in the execution chamber need, and should be guaranteed the right to have their lawyers present, with access to a phone, during the execution process. So,
Andre Thomas The Court, in a 6-3 decision, rejected an appeal by Andre Thomas’s lawyers to review his case because it was tainted by racism. Thomas was sentenced to death in 2005 for killing his wife, their son, and her daughter in Sherman, Texas, in 2004. In his petition for writ of certiorari, his lawyers argued that three members of his all-white jury (Thomas is Black) had stated their opposition
The U.S. Supreme Court shot down an attempt by three California district attorneys to intervene in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state’s lethal injection protocol earlier this month. San Bernardino, Riverside, and San Mateo County DAs Jason Anderson, Michael A. Hestrin, and Stephen M. Wagstaffe had petitioned the Court for a writ of certiorari in May. The lawsuit was filed in 2018 by five men on California’s death
Oklahoma killed Benjamin Cole last week, a severely mentally ill man who did not understand the legal proceedings surrounding his execution. The 57-year-old Cole was convicted of killing his nine-month-old daughter, Brianna, in 2002. “Ben lacked a rational understanding of why Oklahoma took his life today,” attorney Tom Hird said in a statement issued after Cole was killed. “Benjamin Cole was a person with serious mental illness whose schizophrenia and