While we’re on the subject . . .
January 10, 2022
In his editorial in Verdict, Austin Sarat says there is such significant “new progress in the effort to abolish America’s death penalty,” that it’s “not
In his editorial in Verdict, Austin Sarat says there is such significant “new progress in the effort to abolish America’s death penalty,” that it’s “not
In Texas, the oldest person imprisoned on death row is scheduled to be executed on April 21. Carl Wayne Buntion, who is 77, has been
“The death penalty in 2021 was defined by two competing forces: the continuing long-term erosion of capital punishment across most of the country, and extreme
Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. is 65 years old, dependent on a wheelchair, diabetic, and on hospice care because of advanced bladder cancer. He suffers from the
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
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,
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
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
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
An Interview with Michael Radelet, Ph.D. Michael Radelet is a sociologist at the University of Colorado-Boulder, where he served as chair of the Sociology Department from 2003 to 2009. Colorado abolished the death penalty on March 23, 2020. He was the chair of the Sociology Department at the University of Florida from 1996-2001. Dr. Radelet has been involved in death penalty scholarship and research for more than 40 years. He will
By Jessica S. Henry Walter “Arkie” Barton is scheduled to be executed by the State of Missouri on Tuesday, May 19th. Missouri may well be executing an innocent man. Read More
A lawyer for one of the five men the Trump Administration announced it plans to execute in December and January is challenging the legality of executing his client, Alfred Bourgeois, in two separate lawsuits. Reuters reports that Alexander Kursman got the go-ahead on Thursday to add his federal lawsuit challenging the DOJ’s lethal injection procedures to a larger lawsuit already filed by a group of other federal death row prisoners.
“Justice Thurgood Marshall was correct in 1972 when he predicted that if people were better informed about the death penalty, they would reject it. That is why the norms are changing, why capital punishment is in decline, and why eventual abolition is inevitable.” Four days after University of Colorado Sociology Professor Michael L. Radelet wrote those words in an essay for Medium, the Department of Justice announced that the government
In his book, book, Six Amendments, U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens called for revising six of the amendments to the Constitution, including the Eighth Amendment, which he said should be modified to read, “Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments such as the death penalty inflicted.” The declaration was the culmination of years of increasing doubt about the use of
Death Penalty Focus has filed an amicus letter in support of a motion filed last month by death penalty lawyer and DPF board member Robert M. Sanger and Sarah Sanger in the California Supreme Court arguing that while the moratorium is in place in California, prosecutors should be prohibited from seeking the death penalty. As we reported in the July Focus, Sanger argues that the moratorium Gov. Gavin Newsom announced
“Anyone who claims to believe in the sanctity of life, truth, or justice cannot seriously defend the application of the death penalty in Pennsylvania,” Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner wrote in a brief to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court last month. Krasner based his argument on how the death penalty has been applied in Philadelphia, “the jurisdiction that has sought and secured more death sentences than any other county in the
In Tennessee, the Tennessean reports Stephen West was executed by electric chair last night. He opted for electrocution over lethal injection, a choice available to prisoners sentenced to death for a crime committed before 1999. The 56-year-old West was convicted of the 1986 murder of 61-year-old Wanda Romines and her 15-year-old daughter Sheila Romines. This was Tennessee’s fifth execution, and the third execution by electric chair, in the past year.
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