Clemency
,New Voices
,Sep 18, 2007
Just two days after Tennessee’s first electrocution in nearly 50 years, Governor Phil Bredesen (pictured) commuted the death sentence of Michael Joe Boyd to life in prison without parole. The Governor called the representation Boyd received during…
Recent Legislative Activity
,New Voices
,Jan 23, 2019
A bipartisan coalition of Wyoming legislators has introduced a bill to abolish the state’s death penalty. On January 15, 2019, Cheyenne Republican State Representative Jared Olsen (pictured, left) and Republican
Costs
,Victims' Families
,Recent Legislative Activity
,New Voices
,Jan 16, 2018
With the backing of the state’s governor and attorney general, Democratic and Republican sponsors of a bill to repeal Washington’s capital-punishment statute have expressed optimism that the state may abolish the death penalty in 2018. In 2017,
Costs
,Innocence
,Race
,Clemency
,Executions Overview
,Lethal Injection
,Mar 13, 2019
California Governor Gavin Newsom on March 13, 2019 declared a moratorium on executions in the state with the nation’s largest death row. Newsom implemented the moratorium through an executive order granting reprieves to the 737 prisoners currently…
Feb 01, 2022
California’s death row — the largest in the country — will be dismantled within two years, Governor Gavin Newsom announced on January 31, 2022. Under Newsom’s plan, the California Department of Corrections…
Costs
,Deterrence
,Victims' Families
,Recent Legislative Activity
,Religion
,New Voices
,Jan 08, 2018
From October 2016 to October 2017, support for capital punishment among those identifying themselves as Republicans fell by ten percetage points
Race
,New Voices
,Mar 23, 2017
The Florida Legislative Black Caucus has joined more than 100 lawyers and legal experts and the parents of murder victim Sade Dixon in urging Governor Rick Scott to rescind his order removing Orange-Osceola County
Mar 10, 2004
Florida Senator Victor Crist (R‑Tampa), a long-time death penalty supporter, is asking his legislative colleagues to support a bill to bar the juvenile death penalty in Florida. “In my heart and soul I believe it’s the right thing to do. There is …
Costs
,International
,New Voices
,Jun 16, 2017
In a Washington Post op-ed, former New Mexico Governor and United Nations Ambassador Bill Richardson (pictured) — who in 2009 signed a bill to abolish his state’s death penalty — urged that capital punishment be abolished in …
Costs
,New Voices
,Jan 11, 2018
To deter future use of the death penalty in their county, the Blaine County, Idaho County Commissioners on January 2 voted to consider withdrawing from the state’s Capital Crimes Defense Fund as a way to…
Costs
,Recent Legislative Activity
,New Voices
,Jul 10, 2018
A joint committee of the Kentucky legislature conducted a hearing on July 6, 2018 on the Commonwealth’s rarely used death penalty, including a presentation by supporters and opponents of a bill to abolish capital punishment. The G…
Innocence
,New Voices
,Feb 22, 2006
Several members of the Arizona House and Senate recently offered apologies to Ray Krone (pictured), a former Arizona death row inmate who was freed in 2002 following new DNA tests. The apologies followed standing ovations from members of the state…
Costs
,Deterrence
,Recent Legislative Activity
,Religion
,New Voices
,Apr 12, 2017
Three Louisiana legislators, all of them former law enforcement officials, have proposed legislation to abolish the state’s death penalty. Sen. Dan Claitor (R‑Baton Rouge, pictured), a former New Orleans prosecutor who chairs the …
Arbitrariness
,New Voices
,Aug 08, 2017
Mark White (official portrait, pictured), a former governor and attorney general of Texas who became an outspoken critic of the death penalty, died on August 5 at the age of 77. Mr. White served as governor from 1983 to 1987, duri…
Recent Legislative Activity
,Sentencing Data
,New Voices
,Executions Overview
,Jan 27, 2016
A decline in executions is likely in Missouri after two years of unusually high numbers. In 2014, Missouri tied with Texas for the most executions in the U.S., and it was second to Texas in 2015. However, changing attitudes about …
Race
,New Voices
,Jan 09, 2017
Saying that “race plays a decisive role in who lives and who dies” in capital cases in the United States, the National Black Caucus of State Legislators (NBCSL) voted at its 40th annual conference on December 14, 2016, to adopt it…
Race
,New Voices
,Sep 07, 2016
Calling racial bias in the administration of the death penalty “an undisputed fact,” the National Hispanic Caucus of State Legislators (NHCSL), a group of 320 Hispanic legislators, has passed a resolution urging legislative action…
Costs
,Innocence
,New Voices
,Jul 11, 2016
A federal court jury has awarded six Nebraska exonerees (pictured, at their exoneration) $28 million in damages for official misconduct that led to their wrongful convictions in the 1985 rape and murder of Helen Wilson. T…
Recent Legislative Activity
,Apr 12, 2019
In a vote death-penalty opponents praised as “historic,” a veto-proof supermajority of the New Hampshire legislature gave final approval to a bill that would repeal the state’s death penalty statute. By a vote of 17 – 6, the senators voted on April …
New Voices
,May 07, 2008
In 1982, as a second term Assemblyman, Raymond Lesniak voted to reinstate the death penalty in New Jersey. In December 2007, New Jersey voted to abolish the death penalty, becoming the first state in 40 years to accomplish this. Senator Lesniak wa…
Dec 15, 2004
Andrew Cuomo (pictured), who served as U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1997 to 2001, recently urged New York lawmakers to put an end to the death penalty. The state is holding hearings on capital punishment in the wake of a N.…
Sep 28, 2004
When Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was a senator in Arizona, one of the people she asked to draft the state’s death penalty law was Rudolph Gerber. She requested that he “write a law we can live with.” Mr. Gerber went on to become a prosecutor, an A…
Dec 09, 2003
Twenty-six years ago, Bill Wiseman drafted the first lethal-injection law in U.S. history, forever changing the way most death penalty states administer executions. He now says that guilt compelled him to draft the legislation after voting to rein…
Mental Illness
,Recent Legislative Activity
,New Voices
,Mar 30, 2017
In a joint op-ed for The Washington Post, former governors Bob Taft (pictured, l.) and Joseph E. Kernan (pictured, r.) have expressed bipartisan support for proposed legislation that would prohibit the use of the death penalty against peo…
Oct 19, 2004
In a forum hosted by the New Voters Project, U.S. Presidential candidates George Bush and John Kerry expressed their views on executing juvenile offenders. “Federal law prohibits execution of those under 18 when the offense was committed, and I se…
Feb 24, 2004
The Chair of Connecticut’s Judiciary Committee has called for enactment of death penalty reforms to protect against wrongful convictions. Of the six reforms recommended after a 13-month special commission on Connecticut’s death penalty, only one h…
International
,New Voices
,Jan 26, 2006
In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Felix G. Rohatyn (pictured), the U.S. Ambassador to France from 1997 to 2001, noted that during his tenure “no single issue was viewed with as much hostility as our support for the death penalty.” Rohatyn u…
Jan 23, 2004
Former Kansas Republican state senator Tim Emert recently urged members of the Kansas Senate Judiciary Committee to enact a moratorium on imposing the death sentence and executing those who have already been sentenced to die. Noting that capital p…
Dec 09, 2003
Minnesota Senator Tom Neuville, the leading Republican committee member on the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee, says he will oppose Governor Tim Pawlenty’s efforts to reinstate death penalty. Neuville’s basic opposition is moral: “If we solve v…
Apr 21, 2011
Minnesota Senator Tom Neuville, the leading Republican committee member on the state’s Senate Judiciary Committee, says he will oppose Governor Tim Pawlenty’s efforts to reinstate death penalty. Neuville’s basic opposition is mora…
Innocence
,New Voices
,Aug 25, 2008
Joseph D. Tydings is a former U.S. Senator from Maryland who has both prosecuted and defended death penalty cases. In a recent op-ed in the Baltimore Sun he wrote of his growing concerns about capital pu…
Apr 14, 2004
A bipartisan measure to eliminate the juvenile death penalty in Florida has passed the Senate Criminal Justice Committee and is now on its way to the full Senate for consideration. The measure was introduced by Republican Senator Victor Crist, a d…
Innocence
,New Voices
,Feb 01, 2006
Pennsylvania State Representative Michael McGeehan, a tough-on-crime lawmaker from Philadelphia, who earlier had pushed for expedited executions, now regrets that stance. He is sponsoring legislation that would compensate those who have been wrong…
Sep 16, 2004
New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a long time supporter of capital punishment, called for New York’s legislature to step back and more thoroughly review the state’s death penalty system, which has not resulted in any executions and has cos…
May 04, 2004
District attorneys from several Massachusetts counties, including Suffolk, Norfolk, Middlesex, Essex and Barnstable, had strong reservations about Governor Mitt Romney’s attempt to establish a nearly “foolproof” death penalty system in the state. …
Innocence
,New Voices
,Feb 07, 2007
Missouri Rep. Bill Deeken (pictured), a Republican death penalty proponent, has introduced legislation that would halt executions in the state until 2011 and would create a capital punishment commission to examine the fairness and accuracy of Miss…
Nov 23, 2004
According to prominent New York lawmakers, there is little chance that legislators will pass a bill this year to fix the state’s unconstitutional death penalty. Many experts believe that the state’s statute, which N.Y.‘s highest court struck down …
Victims' Families
,New Voices
,Sep 25, 2006
State Assemblyman Nelson T. Albano of Cape May, New Jersey, announced at a forum on the death penalty that he has changed his mind and now opposes capital punishment. Albano said that his change of heart came aft…
Costs
,Innocence
,Recent Legislative Activity
,New Voices
,Mar 01, 2016
Stephen Urquhart (pictured), a Republican state senator in Utah, supported the death penalty until about a year ago, when a friend convinced him that capital punishment didn’t fit his conservative beliefs. Now Urquhart sees the de…
Jun 29, 2004
The Texas Democratic Party has adopted an historic party platform that contains a number of death penalty reform recommendations, including a call for legislators to enact a moratorium on executions, to ban the execution of juveni…
Arbitrariness
,Innocence
,New Voices
,Oct 04, 2007
In a recent meeting with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Editorial Board, Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst (pictured) urged legislators to re-examine the state law that allows an accomplice to be tried by the same judge and jury as the shooter in mu…
Victims' Families
,Recent Legislative Activity
,New Voices
,Jan 17, 2006
Two Virginia lawmakers who have had a family member murdered recently spoke in opposition to the death penalty. During a senate committee hearing on a bill to impose a moratorium on executions, Senators Henry L. Marsh III and Janet D. Howell noted…
Aug 06, 2003
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, a Republican, reiterated his opposition to capital punishment. Bloomberg noted, “The death penalty I’ve always had a problem with, because too many times in the past you’ve seen innocent people incarcerated a…
Costs
,New Voices
,Aug 03, 2017
In a forthcoming article in the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, released online in July, Ben Jones argues that, despite the popular conception of death-penalty abolition as a politically progressive cause, its future succ…
New Voices
,May 18, 2016
One year after the Nebraska legislature voted to repeal the death penalty and overrode a gubernatorial veto of that measure, actions in legislatures across the country suggest that the state’s efforts signalled a growing movement against the death…
Representation
,New Voices
,Aug 16, 2007
U.S. Senators Patrick Leahy (D‑VT) and Arlen Specter (R‑PA) (pictured) are urging the Justice Department to delay new rules that would give Attorney General Alberto Gonzales authority to limit the time death row inmates spend pursuing appeals befo…
Innocence
,Clemency
,New Voices
,Apr 14, 2017
Amid mounting concerns that Virginia may execute an innocent man on April 25, a diverse group of religious, political, and business leaders are calling on Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe to grant clemency to
