A number of people on California’s death row could be resentenced in the wake of a state Supreme Court ruling earlier this month. The unanimous
James Coddington, a 50-year-old man who turned his life around in prison over the last 25 years, was executed by Oklahoma last Wednesday, two weeks
Terry McCaffrey is on a mission. Chair of the East-West San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the California People of Faith and Amnesty International’s Death
In Alabama, Joe Nathan James, Jr., was executed late last month in what a private autopsy indicates was a “long death.” The Atlantic’s Elizabeth Bruenig’s
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt has issued a 60-day stay of execution for Richard Glossip. The stay is effective September 22, the day Glossip was scheduled
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted a stay of execution to Ramiro Gonzales earlier this month, two days before he was scheduled to be
Oklahoma’s plan to kill 25 men between next month and December 2024 has been met with outrage and disbelief. Former Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry and
In California, three death sentences were overturned by state and federal courts in the past few weeks, the Death Penalty Information Center reports. “Richard Clark,
In her New York Times piece, “After Parkland, One Question Remains: What Is Justice?”, Audra D. S. Burch writes about Tom and Gena Hoyer, whose
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shinn v. Ramirez. It’s a complicated case, involving two respondents, David Ramirez and Barry Jones, who were convicted of separate murders, Ramirez in 1990, and Jones in 1995; a Supreme Court ruling in Martinez v. Ryan (2012), and the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) passed by Congress in 1996. Both Ramirez and Jones were sentenced
On Wednesday, December 8, 2021, we will presented “The Death Penalty Brutalizes Us All,” the fourth in our webinar series. Mike Farrell, DPF board president, moderated an in-depth conversation with three people who know first-hand how the brutality of the death penalty reverberates beyond the men and women who have been sentenced to death to their families and loved ones, to their spiritual advisors, and legal teams.
In his op-ed, “California halted executions, now it should abolish the death penalty,” in the Los Angeles Times, Scott Martelle says the moratorium on executions instituted by Gov. Gavin Newsom “is not a solution” to the state’s many problems with its death penalty system. He maintains it’s time for the governor and legislative leaders to put an abolition initiative on the ballot in 2024, and “Newsom should use his political
In Mississippi, David Cox died by lethal injection late last month in the state’s first execution since 2012. Cox, who had asked the court to dismiss all appeals, was convicted in 2010 of killing his estranged wife. WLOX reported that among his last words were a message to his children that “I love them very much and that I was a good man at one time.” In Idaho, Gerald Ross
Doyle Lee Hamm, who survived a horrifically botched execution in Alabama’s Holman Correctional Facility in 2018, died late last month in prison. The cause was complications from lymphoma and cranial cancer. He was 64. AL.com reported that Hamm was buried last Friday in Cherokee, Alabama. His longtime attorney, Bernard Harcourt, who was at the gravesite, said in a statement that “It was a simple country service with about 35 persons
Pervis Payne, who has been on Tennessee’s death row for 34 years, and has always maintained his innocence, will be resentenced to life in prison because of his intellectual disability. A county criminal court judge vacated Payne’s sentence late last month after the Shelby County district attorney withdrew her request for a hearing on the issue of intellectual disability. She acted after a state expert testified that an examination of
Oklahoma executed Bigler Stouffer II on Thursday. He was 79, the second-oldest prisoner to be killed in the U.S. since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, and the oldest in Oklahoma history, according to The Oklahoman. He was put to death by lethal injection for the fatal shooting of elementary school teacher Linda Reaves in 1985. It was Oklahoma’s second execution this year. John Grant was killed on October
Right up to and including the commutation of his death sentence, the state of Oklahoma acted with deliberate malice and cruelty to Julius Jones. Yes, his sentence was commuted, but only hours before he was scheduled to be killed by the same lethal injection method that caused John Grant to vomit and convulse violently during his execution just three weeks earlier. And his sentence was commuted to life without the
When the California Committee on Revision of the Penal Code released a draft report in May, recommending that California abolish its death penalty, it highlighted just how broken California’s death penalty system is. Late last month, the committee released its final report, reiterating that recommendation, specifying what can and should be done until it’s abolished. The only way to repeal the death penalty in California is by initiative, and until
