Tennessee, which hasn’t put anyone to death since 2009, is now hoping to execute eight people before June 1. That means eight executions in four
Thirty-five years ago, the American Bar Association was one of the first organizations to call for abolition of the death penalty for those under the
Four U.S. Senators introduced a bill this week that would allow federal prosecutors in death penalty cases to impanel a second jury for sentencing if
Texas executed John Battaglia last week, the third person executed this year, and the second of the week. The 62-year-old was sentenced to die in
Two years ago, we reported on the use of “ethnic adjustment” by prosecutors in death penalty cases, which artificially raises minority defendants’ IQ scores. In
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation released its revised lethal drug protocol late last month, and it doesn’t address the problems that plagued its
In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich granted a reprieve to Raymond Tibbetts, who was scheduled to be executed next Tuesday for the 1997 murder of his
In the March issue of Reason, reporter C.J. Ciaramella writes of how state officials have decided the “black hood of anonymity also covers the pharmacies
Nicola White is a London-based artist whose work is fashioned from the fragments of wood, glass, pottery, and other artifacts she finds on the banks
In two weeks, Scott Dekraai, who confessed to killing eight people and wounding another in October 2011, in the worst mass killing in Orange County history, will be sentenced to eight consecutive life terms. And, with that sentence, Orange County Superior Court Judge Thomas Goethals will end a six-year legal nightmare for many of the victims’ family members, who have pleaded with prosecutors to accept the defense offer of a
Mark James Asay was executed in Florida late last month, the first execution in the state since January 2016, when the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Hurst v. Florida put its death penalty scheme in turmoil. Asay was sentenced to death for killing Robert Booker, a black man, and Robert McDowell, who was Latino, in 1987. It was the first time Florida has executed a white man for killing a
Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens issued a stay of execution late last month for Marcellus Williams based on new DNA evidence. The stay was issued hours before Williams was scheduled to die by lethal injection. At the same time, the governor announced the creation of a new five-person Board of Inquiry, which will review Williams’s case, and make a recommendation as to whether he should be granted clemency. Williams was scheduled
In Ohio, 45-year-old Gary Otte is scheduled to be executed next Wednesday for two murders in 1992. Otte’s lawyers are challenging both the state’s lethal injection method and the constitutionality of its death penalty scheme in two separate appeals. They argue that Ohio’s use of midazolam is unconstitutional because corrections officials can’t prove that the drug is preventing the inmate from suffering serious pain, and that because Otte was under
John T. Thorngren is 76 years old, and has had three heart attacks and two open heart surgeries. But he had one last item on his “bucket list”: to finish a book he started seven years ago about convicted murderer, Pamela Perillo, who spent 20 years on death row in Texas before her sentence was commuted to life in prison. He succeeded; “Salvation on Death Row” will be released in
In a guest editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Stephen Cooper calls on Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who late last month stayed the execution of Marcellus Williams, not only to commute Williams’s sentence to life without parole, but that of every condemned inmate in Missouri, and declare a moratorium on the death penalty. “The history of the death penalty in America is hewn from the hell of slavery, subjugation and
The California Supreme Court today upheld Proposition 66, which will radically change the state’s current death penalty law, and will most likely open the door for executions to resume after a 10-year hiatus. Today’s decision was the result of a lawsuit brought by former California Attorney General John Van de Kamp and Ron Briggs, and filed on their behalf by the law firm Orrick, Herrington and Sutcliffe immediately after Prop
A Kentucky Circuit Judge ruled last week that it is unconstitutional to sentence to death a defendant who is under the age of 21. He issued his decision after attorneys for Travis Bredhold, who is accused of killing a gas station attendant when he was just over the age of 18, asked him to exclude the death penalty when he goes to trial. “Retribution is not proportional if the law’s
After an 18-month hiatus following the U.S. Supreme Court’s Hurst v. Florida decision, Florida is gearing up to begin executions again. Yesterday, the Florida Supreme Court issued an opinion in Hitchcock v. Florida that could affect several other death penalty cases that have been on hold pending the resolution of this one. In a brief decision, the court rejected the plaintiff’s seven arguments that his death sentence was unconstitutional because it
