After Alabama corrections officials botched their third execution in four months on November 17, Gov. Kay Ivey called a hiatus, saying it wasn’t the fault
Missouri killed Kevin Johnson on Tuesday evening. He was sentenced to death for killing Kirkwood police officer Sgt. William McEntee in 2005, a crime he
A judge’s order late last month means a man on Tennessee’s death row, who slit his wrists before severing his penis in early October, will
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
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
“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
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
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
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
Two of three planned executions for this month were stayed, while Texas held its first of five planned for this year. Texas executed Carl Buntion last Thursday. He was 78, the oldest person on the state’s death row, and the oldest person ever executed by the state. Buntion was sentenced to death in 1991 for the killing of Houston police officer James Irby during a traffic stop, KPRC2 reports. He
The Rev. Caroll Pickett, who, as prison chaplain on Texas’s death row, witnessed 95 executions, died earlier this month. He was 88. He told the New York Times in 2017, “People don’t realize that you never get over it, unless you’re just cold and calculated. I’ll never forget it. Not a day goes by. Not a day goes by. And I don’t expect it to. If it does, then I
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee issued a temporary reprieve for Oscar Smith on Thursday, WKRN.com reports. “Due to an oversight in preparation for lethal injection, the scheduled execution of Oscar Smith will not move forward tonight. I am granting a temporary reprieve while we address Tennessee Department of Correction protocol,” Lee said. The statement was released just hours before Smith was scheduled to be killed and after he ate his last
In Missouri, Carman Deck is scheduled to be executed on Tuesday for the 1996 killings of James and Zelma Long. Deck’s 1998 death sentence had been overturned three times, before a three-judge panel for the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals restored his death sentence, KHQA reports. Supporters of Deck, including the Missouri ACLU, Missourians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, and two state legislators, one Democrat and one Republican, have
In less than three weeks, Melissa Lucio is scheduled to be executed by Texas for the killing of her two-year-old daughter, despite overwhelming evidence her daughter died after a fall down the stairs. Last week, seven Texas legislators visited Lucio on death row to pray with her and assure her they were doing what they could to stop her execution, AP reports. State Rep. Joe Moody told AP that while
Jury selection for the penalty phase of the trial for Nikolas Cruz began this week. Cruz pleaded guilty in October to killing 17 people and wounding 17 others inside Marjory Stonemason Douglas High School in February 2018. The jury will decide whether to sentence Cruz, who was 19 at the time of the shooting, to life in prison without the possibility of parole or to death. A death verdict will
Our Annual Awards Event last Thursday was a powerful reminder of how far we’ve come since we held our first event 30 years ago. And the accounts from those who were instrumental in getting Virginia’s and France’s death penalties abolished gave us renewed energy to continue our efforts to see it repealed not just here in California, but in all the remaining death penalty states in the country and around
On “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver,” Oliver explains just how overwhelmingly difficult it is to be exonerated for a wrongful conviction even in the face of overwhelming evidence of innocence. Focusing on cases including that of Joseph Amrine, exonerated in Missouri, Lamar Johnson and his 27-year fight to overturn his wrongful conviction, and Melissa Lucio, facing execution in Texas next month for a crime she didn’t commit, Oliver offers
In Kentucky, a bill prohibiting the execution of people with serious mental illness passed last week. HB 269 adds mental illness to the list of disabilities preventing the state from executing those convicted of capital murder. In Tennessee, officials announced plans to execute five people this year, with the first killing scheduled for next month, the Tennessean reports. Seventy-one-year-old Oscar Franklin Smith’s execution has been set for April 21. He
