News & Updates

Share:
Filter & Search

In brief: March 2023

In Texas, corrections officials executed two men this month, Gary Green and Arthur Brown, Jr. Texas has killed five men this year. With last week’s

Read More »

SCOTUS “hamstrings” death row prisoners’ 6th Amendment rights

In a decision that dissenting Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor called “perverse” and “illogical,” the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 late last month that death row prisoners can’t present new evidence that they had ineffective counsel in their state trials in their federal habeas appeal. The case of Shinn v. Ramirez involved two respondents, David Ramirez and Barry Jones, who were convicted of separate murders and sentenced to death in

Read More »

Texas lawmaker would support death penalty moratorium in the wake of Lucio case

Texas state Rep. Jeff Leach, who led a bipartisan effort in the legislature to commute Melissa Lucio’s death sentence last month, told the host of the WFAA television public affairs program, “Inside Texas Politics with Jason Whitely,” that he would support a moratorium on all executions in Texas. “Right now, going through what I just went through and seeing what I just saw, I would,” Leach told Whitely. “My trust

Read More »

Arizona plans another execution in early June

Frank Atwood, imprisoned on death row since 1987 for the killing of an eight-year-old girl, is scheduled to be executed on June 8 in Arizona’s gas chamber.  The state has two methods of killing: lethal injection or the gas chamber (which was outlawed in 1992, but since Atwood’s conviction occurred before that date, he can choose death by gas), but the only option for gas is cyanide. AZ Central reports

Read More »

Tennessee and Ohio stay executions over lethal injection concerns

A little over a week after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced he was staying five state killings planned for this year, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced he was postponing the September execution of Kareem Jackson. Both states execute by lethal injection, and both cited issues with that method as their reason for issuing stays.  In Tennessee, Oscar Smith’s late April execution was stayed by the governor about an hour before

Read More »

While we’re on the subject . . .

Closing the Slaughterhouse: The Inside Story of Death Penalty Abolition in Virginia is a comprehensive account of the remarkable effort that resulted in the abolition of Virginia’s death penalty last year. Written by Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty Executive Director Dale Brumfield, one of the driving forces behind the decades-long effort, the book combines multiple interviews and hundreds of sources for a riveting explanation of this monumental victory. Closing

Read More »

In brief: May 2022

There was a “worrying rise in executions and death sentences” last year, Amnesty International announced in its annual report this week. In 2021, at least 579 executions were carried out across 18 countries, an increase of 20% from 2020. AI found that Iran was the leading executioner, having killed at least 314 people, followed by Saudi Arabia, which doubled its number last year to 65 from 27 in 2020. Still,

Read More »

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine postpones another execution over lethal injection concerns

A little over a week after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced he was staying five state killings planned for this year, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced he was postponing the September execution of Kareem Jackson. Both states execute by lethal injection, and both cited issues with that method as their reason for issuing stays.  In Ohio, DeWine said he was rescheduling Jackson’s September 15 execution date to December 10, 2025,

Read More »

Arizona executes Clarence Dixon despite his mental illness

The state of Arizona killed Clarence Dixon on Wednesday morning, despite his long history of mental health challenges and the abuse he suffered as a child growing up in the Navajo Nation. Dixon was 66 years old. AZ Central reports  that, according to a media witness, “The execution team had trouble getting IVs into Dixon, who grimaced and appeared to be in pain while this was happening.” Arizona’s last execution

Read More »

Tennessee governor stays five executions planned for this year

Stating that, “The death penalty is an extremely serious matter, and I expect the Tennessee Department of Correction to leave no question that procedures are correctly followed,” Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced last week that the state will launch “a third-party review of a lethal injection testing oversight” that led him to issue last month’s stay of execution for Oscar Smith about 30 minutes before it was to take place.

Read More »