Today, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles voted unanimously to recommend clemency for Thomas Whitaker. Whitaker is scheduled to be executed on Thursday for
Washington’s state Senate voted to end the death penalty by a vote of 26-22 yesterday. The bill, which would repeal the death penalty and replace
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
Support for the death penalty is the lowest it’s been in more than 40 years.
As the cost of executions rises, state officials are scrambling to find the money to pay for them.
Newspapers are unanimous in their endorsement of Prop 62 and the repeal of California’s death penalty.
“We actually thought at the time, naively, that a broader death penalty would deter criminals,” Briggs says. “We truly believed the bill would reduce crime in California.”
Five counties in southern California have been handing down so many death sentences one death penalty expert has dubbed them the “new Death Belt.”
A federal appeals court ruled last week that Missouri must disclose the identities of the suppliers who provide it with the drugs used in its single-drug lethal injection protocol. The ruling was the result of a lawsuit filed by two Mississippi death row inmates who are challenging the constitutionality of the three-drug cocktail that would be used in their executions. Richard Jordan and Ricky Chase argued that when the U.S.
The National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators passed a resolution last week calling for an end to the death penalty in the U.S. The 320-member group pointed out the “disproportionate and prejudicial application of the death penalty toward Latinos and other minorities” as well as the high risk of innocent people being executed. “This is the civil rights issue of our time,” said one caucus member. In New Mexico, Republican
“In California, the death penalty system stopped working many years ago, but taxpayers continue to pay for it,” says Our Revolution, the recently formed political action group started by Bernie Sanders, in its endorsement of Proposition 62. “Fight crime, not futility,” the San Francisco Chronicle wrote in its editorial supporting Prop 62, and opposing Proposition 66. For the LA Times,”Something clearly has to be changed. The answer, however, is not
Fourteen years ago, the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment issued a report recommending 85 reforms designed to minimize the possibility that an innocent person would be executed under that state’s death penalty scheme. One year later, Southern California criminal defense attorney (and DPF board member) Robert Sanger analyzed the report in light of California’s death penalty system, and concluded that more than 92 percent of the same reforms were needed