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
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
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
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
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
Death Penalty Focus Presents: 30th Awards Event (Virtual) Originally Aired: March 24, 2022 Watch On-Demand Tribute Journal Donate About While 2021 was difficult in many
Last week, lawyers for Melissa Lucio submitted a clemency application to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole. And a
South Carolina plans to execute its prisoners by firing squad, the first time a state has used this method since 2010 when Utah killed Ronnie
The U.S. Supreme Court earlier this month reimposed the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who set off one of the bombs at the 2013 Boston
“Yay Gavin Newsom. I’m very thankful to him for having the courage, the guts, to stand up and say before California murders anyone on my watch I want to know all the facts.” Kevin Cooper was responding to the news that California Gov. Gavin Newsom late last month ordered additional DNA testing on evidence from the 1983 quadruple murder case that sent him to death row almost 34 years ago. From the time
In New Hampshire on Thursday, by a veto-proof vote of 279-88, the House repealed the state’s death penalty and replaced it with a sentence of life without parole. The Concord Monitor reports that the “bill is identical in wording to the bill that passed last year,” which was vetoed by Gov. Chris Sununu. The paper reports the bill will now go to the Senate, where it is expected to pass
In their paper, ” ‘A World of Steel-Eyed Death’: An Empirical Evaluation of the Failure of the Strickland Standard to Ensure Adequate Counsel to Defendants with Mental Disabilities Facing the Death Penalty,” law professor Michael L. Perlin, criminology professor Talia Roitberg Harmon, and doctoral student Sarah Chatt analyze how inadequacy of counsel claims, established by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Strickland v. Washington (1984), were decided in the Fifth
“Everyone has a breaking point. Anyone can be convinced to confess, to lie. And it’s not only that they can but they do it at great risk to their future. It’s deeply fascinating and deeply troubling. The idea that someone would give a false confession is so counterintuitive, it fascinates me intellectually,” says Richard A. Leo, a Professor of Law and Psychology at University of San Francisco’s law school. Leo
California Gov. Gavin Newsom today ordered additional DNA testing on evidence in the case of Kevin Cooper, who was sent to death row almost 34 years ago for a quadruple murder in Southern California that he has insisted he didn’t commit. “I take no position regarding Mr. Cooper’s guilt or innocence at this time. Especially in cases where the government seeks to impose the ultimate punishment of death, I need to be
The Toledo Blade reports that Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is putting executions on hold because, he said today, “Ohio is not going to execute someone on my watch when a federal judge has found it to be cruel and unusual punishment.” DeWine was referring to a January decision by a federal judge in response to a challenge of the state’s use of midazolam in executions by attorneys for condemned prison
Proposition 66 was passed by popular vote in 2016. Proponents insisted the proposition would speed up the process of capital trials and executions. It was big on promises, and short on details, but a slim majority — 51% — of Californians voted in favor of it. As a result, the California Judicial Council, under the auspices of the Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court, created rules implementing Proposition 66, scheduled
Republican Governor Mike DeWine postponed the execution of Warren Keith Henness late last month and ordered the state Department of Rehabilitation & Correction to “to assess Ohio’s current options for execution drugs and examine possible alternative drugs.” Henness was scheduled to be executed next Wednesday. DeWine ordered the reprieve in response to a decision issued by a federal judge on January 14 stating that, “If Ohio executed Warren Henness under its
“Kevin Cooper Case: Was the Wrong Man Convicted in the 1983 Chino Hills Massacre?” was the title of a two-hour episode on a “48 Hours” program on CBS. An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times asked, “DNA tests could reveal if Kevin Cooper was wrongly convicted of murder. Why didn’t Jerry Brown order them?”. And Kevin Cooper wrote two op-eds, one in the San Francisco Chronicle, “Death row inmate asks Gov. Newsom