In brief: September 2024
September 23, 2024
In California, The state legislature approved state Sen. Nancy Skinner’s bill, SB 254, which would restore news media access to California prisons. The bill would
In California, The state legislature approved state Sen. Nancy Skinner’s bill, SB 254, which would restore news media access to California prisons. The bill would
The National Security Agency released a 74-year-old previously classified document “confirming that the U.S. government knew that Ethel Rosenberg was not a spy long before her
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall announced last month that the state plans to kill three people in the next three months. Alan Miller is scheduled
Unless Texas Gov. Greg Abbott or the courts intervene, Robert Roberson will be executed on October 17. Roberson, who has autism, was sentenced to death
In a conversation conducted over multiple texts over a few days, Kevin Cooper described how different his life is off death row and in the
Two significant criminal justice bills were introduced in California’s Senate during this session, which ended late last month. One stalled, the other passed, but is
In late July, a Sacramento jury found Anton Paris guilty of first-degree murder with special circumstances for the shooting death of 27-year-old Sacramento County Sheriff’s
In the second of the New York Times’ three-part video series on the death penalty, “He Killed my Mom, He Shouldn’t Die,” Brett Malone walks
In California, Morris Solomon Jr., sentenced to death in September 1992 for the murders of six women in 1986-1987, died at the California Health Care
Alabama South Carolina In Tennessee, the only woman on the state’s death row is asking to have her death sentence vacated. Christa Pike was 18 when she was sentenced in 1996, the youngest woman to be sent to death row in the United States since 1972. Her lawyers argue that last year’s ruling by the Tennessee Supreme Court in State v. Booker that mandatory life sentences for juveniles in homicide
Two men, one in Oregon and the other in Oklahoma, both initially sentenced to death, who spent a combined 73 years in prison, have been released in the past couple of months based on evidence of their innocence. Jesse Johnson Jesse Johnson, who spent 17 years on Oregon’s death row and 25 years in custody for a crime he didn’t commit, was freed earlier this month. He is the 194th
At least two moderate criminal justice reform bills stalled in the California legislature this month, a surprising development in a state perceived to be so progressive. California Assembly Bill 280 would have limited the time corrections officials could restrict those imprisoned in the state’s jails, prisons, and immigration centers in solitary confinement. Senate Bill 94 would have allowed judges to review life-without-parole sentences for people convicted of the offense before
Almost immediately after being elected Los Angeles County District Attorney in 2020, George Gascón issued a “Death Penalty Policy” promising that his office would not seek the death penalty and, in addition, “will not seek an execution date for any person sentenced to death. . . . will not defend existing death sentences and will engage in a thorough review of every existing death penalty judgment from Los Angeles County
A man who spent 17 years on Oregon’s death row and 25 years in custody for a crime he didn’t commit was freed earlier this month. He is the 194th person exonerated from death row since 1973, the Death Penalty Information Center reported. Jesse Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death for killing Harriet Lavern Thompson in Salem in March 1998. He maintained his innocence from the time he was
Because it doesn’t have access to lethal injection drugs, Ohio’s last execution was in 2018. And now, a group of bipartisan legislators has introduced a House bill, a companion piece to a pending Senate bill, to abolish capital punishment altogether. But, according to WTGV-13, while sponsors say they have more support this year than they have previously, “Senate President Matt Huffman, who controls what gets put up for a vote
The Tennessee Criminal Court of Appeals has affirmed a lower court ruling that Pervis Payne, who spent 34 years on Tennessee’s death row before being resentenced to life in prison last year, can serve his two life sentences concurrently, the Commercial Appeal reported. The ruling, issued late last month, means Payne will be eligible for parole in less than four years. Payne, now 54, was sentenced to death in 1988
In Alabama last week, where corrections officials botched three executions in a row last year because of the execution team’s inability to insert IV lines for lethal drugs, Attorney General Steve Marshall asked the state Supreme Court last week to set an execution date for Kenneth Smith and indicated the state plans to kill Smith by nitrogen hypoxia. Smith’s execution was called off last November after the state repeatedly failed
Gerald Pizzuto, Jr., has been on Idaho’s death row since his 1986 conviction of the murders of Berta Herndon and her nephew Del Herndon in 1985. He is 66 years old, dependent on a wheelchair, diabetic, and on hospice care because of advanced bladder cancer. He suffers from the effects of repeated brain injuries and the horrific consequences of the sexual and physical abuse he suffered when he was a
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