In brief June 2025
June 26, 2025
In Mississippi, Richard Jordan, a 79-year-old Vietnam vet, sentenced to death in 1977 for the kidnapping and murder of Edwina Marter in 1976, was executed
In Mississippi, Richard Jordan, a 79-year-old Vietnam vet, sentenced to death in 1977 for the kidnapping and murder of Edwina Marter in 1976, was executed
Sunny Jacobs, sentenced to 17 years in a Florida prison, five of them in solitary confinement on death row, for a crime she didn’t commit,
The United Auto Workers Region 9 (covering most of Pennsylvania) is supporting the state’s HB 888, which would abolish the death penalty in Pennsylvania, Pennsylvanians
Death penalty states in the U.S. “are in the midst of an historic run of executions that exhibit an unprecedented white-victim preference, and the primacy
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton requested a new execution date for Robert Roberson last week, the Texas Tribune reported. Roberson was sentenced to death in Texas
In a 6-3 decision yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Ruben Gutierrez, sentenced to death for the murder of 85-year-old Escolastica Harrison in 1998
So far this year, Florida has executed seven people, more than any other state; at the same time, Gov. DeSantis continues to sign bills expanding
San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe will seek the death penalty in the case of Chunli Zhao, a farmworker accused of seven counts of
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced earlier this month that due to “a recent and concerning rise in violent incidents directed towards both
Our conversation on “Making a Murderer: False Confessions, Wrongful Convictions” was such an enlightening discussion between DPF President Mike Farrell and Dr. Richard Leo, Professor of Law and Social Psychology at the University of San Francisco School of Law. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQhfA9_yW54&t=42s Quick Facts Since 1989 there have been at least 3,431 exonerations. Fully 13% of these – 434 cases – contained false confessions or admissions. That percentage soars to 23% in
2023 was the ninth consecutive year that fewer than 30 people were executed in the United States, and fewer than 50 people were sentenced to death, the Death Penalty Information Center states in its 2023 annual report. Twenty-nine states — the majority — have either “abolished the death penalty or paused them by executive action,” according to DPIC. And only five states, Alabama, Florida, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas, conducted executions,
Earlier this week, the Alabama Department of Corrections released additional details about its plan to become the first state to use nitrogen hypoxia in state killings. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled in October that the state attorney general could proceed with his plan to execute Kenneth Eugene Smith with nitrogen gas in a 6-2 decision by the all-Republican court. In their post in Substack, Lauren Gill and Dan Moritz-Rabson report
Alabama executed Casey McWhorter earlier this month. He was convicted and sentenced to die in 1994 for the robbery and murder of Edward Lee Williams in 1993. McWhorter was one of three teenagers, one of whom was Williams’ son, charged with the murder. But he was the only one sentenced to death because he was the only defendant who was 18 at the time of the crime. The other two,
“Whether you support capital punishment or oppose it, one thing is clear. Oklahoma’s system is so fundamentally flawed that we cannot know that someone who has been condemned to death actually deserves the ultimate penalty,” writes former U.S. Judge Andy Lester in a letter to the editor in nondoc.com. Lester was one of three co-chairs of the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission that, in 2017, called for a moratorium on
In South Carolina, executions are on hold until at least February, when the supreme court will hold a hearing over a lawsuit filed by four people on death row who argue that electrocution and firing squad are unconstitutional methods of execution, WIS10 reports. The state’s default method of execution is the electric chair but offers the option of a firing squad or lethal injection if the drugs are available, according
Late last month, Pennsylvania House Bill 999 to repeal the death penalty passed out of the Judiciary Committee on a vote of 15-10. It was supported by all the Democrats and one of the Republicans on the committee. Democratic state Rep. Chris Rabb sponsored the bill, arguing that the repeal is imperative for many reasons, including its astronomical cost and the high risk of executing an innocent person. City &
Texas killed 53-year-old Brent Ray Brewer by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville on November 9. And one week later, on November 16, the state executed David Renteria. The state killed a total of eight men this year. It has executed 579 individuals since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Brewer was executed for the April 1990 death
Texas killed 53-year-old Brent Ray Brewer by lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville last week. Brewer was executed for the April 1990 death of 66-year-old Robert Laminack during a robbery. He was 19 at the time. In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Brewer’s 1991 death sentence, finding that finding that the court failed to give his jurors the instructions that they could consider mitigating factors in his