California has the largest female death row in the U.S., with 23 condemned women imprisoned at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. Four women
In the words of Bob Dylan, “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.” The confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court, replacing
“The eighth amendment isn’t just a window. It’s a mirror. And what the Court has said is that our norms, our values are implicated when
(This is a developing story. We will continue to update it as events unfold.) Yesterday, just a few hours before Edmund Zagorski was scheduled to be executed,
Although court documents state that a member of the Oklahoma jury that sentenced Julius Jones to death for the July 1999 fatal shooting of 45-year-old Paul Howell
In his column, “Justice Delayed, With a Life on the Line,” in last Sunday’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristof again writes about the case of Kevin
In North Carolina, the Center for Death Penalty Litigation released a report, “Unequal Justice: How Obsolete Laws and Unfair Trials Created North Carolina’s Outsized Death
Yesterday, the Washington supreme court acknowledged that the state’s death penalty scheme is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner and struck it down. The
Julius Jones was arrested in 1999 and sent to Oklahoma’s death row three years later for a carjacking murder it’s likely he didn’t commit. Now,
One year ago, we wrote about the case of Walter Ogrod, a man whom many believe was wrongfully convicted of killing four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn in Philadelphia in 1988. He was sent to death row in 1996, in spite of the fact it took four years for police to arrest him, there was no physical evidence or eyewitness identification, and that Ogrod, who is on the autism spectrum disorder, signed
It’s no secret that there are some very talented men and women on death rows around the country. We’ve published some of their works here in the past and we have some new work we’d like to share. This poem was written by Steven Nelson, who is on death row in Texas. He has been corresponding with two lovely women in France for the past two years, and recently sent
This week, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signed a bill joining Oklahoma and Mississippi in allowing officials to execute prisoners using nitrogen gas, a new, untested, untried method of killing women and men – or, as Oklahoma State Representative Mike Christian refers to them, “these beasts.” Let that sink in for a moment, if you will. . . . Mr. Christian’s new law makes Oklahoma one of three states that may
A new poll conducted by Quinnipiac University finds that American voters choose life without parole over the death penalty 51-37 percent, the first time a majority chose life over death since the poll first asked the question in 2004. By a much wider margin, 71-21 percent, voters say they are opposed to the death penalty for opioid drug dealers, a proposal endorsed by Donald Trump. But while these poll numbers
Anthony Ray Hinton spent 30 years on Alabama’s death row for a crime he didn’t commit. He was exonerated and freed in April 2015. The Equal Justice Initiative, which appealed his case for years, says that Ray, which is the name he goes by, was “One of the longest-serving death row prisoners in Alabama history and among the longest-serving condemned prisoners to be freed after presenting evidence of innocence.” He
Tomorrow, on the three-week anniversary of the botched execution of Doyle Lee Hamm, which left him bruised, bleeding and limping after a two-and-a-half hour attempt by corrections officials to kill him, Alabama will try to execute another prisoner. AL.com reports that Michael Wayne Eggers is scheduled to be executed Thursday for the December 2000 murder of Bennie Francis Murray during the course of a kidnapping and robbery. AL.com says his
On Thursday, February 22, three executions in three different states were scheduled, with three very different outcomes. Eric Branch was executed in Florida, dying with what eyewitnesses described as a “blood-curdling” scream. Doyle Lee Hamm was “tortured” for two-and-a-half hours in Alabama, his lawyer said, before officials gave up and left him “bruised, punctured, and limping from the attempted execution.” And Thomas Whitaker endured the full execution procedure right up
The U.S. Supreme Court late last month stayed the execution of Vernon Madison, less than an hour before it was to take place on January 25, and agreed to review his case. Madison was sent to Alabama’s death row 33 years ago after being convicted of killing Mobile police Cpl. Julius Schulte in April 1985. In their application for a stay, Madison’s lawyers from the Equal Justice Initiative argued that
Kevin Cooper has been on San Quentin’s death row for 33 years for a quadruple murder he didn’t commit. As we reported in the January Focus, the legions of people who believe in his innocence include Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge William A. Fletcher, former American Bar Association President Paulette Brown, at least 11 federal court judges, and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. We can now add the
