News & Developments
Arbitrariness
Nov 05, 2024
DPI Report Provides Valuable Context for 2024 Elections
As voters across the United States cast their ballots on election day, the Death Penalty Information Center’s July 2024 report, Lethal Election: How the U.S. Electoral Process Increases the Arbitrariness of the Death Penalty, provides valuable context on the intersection of politics and the death…
Read MoreIntellectual Disability
Nov 04, 2024
United States Supreme Court Sends Case of Alabama Death-Sentenced Prisoner Back to 11th Circuit Court of Appeals
On November 4, 2024, the United States Supreme Courts released its order in the case of Hamm v. Smith, 604 U.S. ___(2024). The petition for certiorari, filed by the State of Alabama last year, involved a prisoner named Joseph Clifton Smith whose death sentence was vacated in 2021 after a United States district court found he had intellectual disability. Mr. Smith had taken five IQ tests, four of which placed his IQ in the low- to mid-70s, the range generally accepted by experts to be…
Read MoreClemency
Nov 01, 2024
Prisoners With Executions Dates in South Carolina and Idaho File Requests for Clemency
Attorneys for South Carolina death row prisoner Richard Moore (pictured) filed a clemency petition with Governor Henry McMaster, asking him to commute his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Mr. Moore has garnered support from a wide range of individuals, including the former director of South Carolina Department of Corrections Jon Ozmint. In a letter to Gov. McMaster, Mr. Ozmint writes about how Mr. Moore’s “story of redemption” and good behavior will allow him to…
Read MoreMethods of Execution
Oct 31, 2024
Kentucky Supreme Court Denies Attorney General’s Request to Remove Injunction on Executions
On October 24, 2024, the Kentucky Supreme Court denied a request by the Attorney General and the Kentucky Department of Corrections (KDOC) to remove an injunction currently prohibiting executions in Kentucky. In 2010, a Franklin County Circuit judge ordered a temporary injunction of all executions due to concerns regarding numerous aspects of Kentucky’s execution protocol, including concerns about the mental status and intellectual disability status of death row prisoners and the state’s…
Read MoreRepresentation
Oct 30, 2024
New Resource: Database of Capital Appeals Dismissed Solely Because of Missed Deadlines
The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to share a powerful new resource illustrating the dire consequences of inadequate legal representation in capital cases: a database of cases that were dismissed because they were not filed by the statutory deadline. The list of cases, developed by Professor Eric M. Freedman (pictured) and law student Paul Sessa of Hofstra University School of Law, will be updated by DPI going forward. Mr. Sessa and Professor Freedman found that from 1996 to…
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