DPIC Analysis: 13 Texas Death Warrants Raise Troubling Questions About U.S. Execution Practices

Innocence

Sep 17, 2019

Supporters of Rodney Reed (pic­tured) are call­ing for a new tri­al for the Texas death-row pris­on­er sen­tenced to death in 1998 by an all-white jury in a racial­ly charged tri­al. On September 10, 2019, Reed’s fam­i­ly a…

Arbitrariness

Sep 16, 2019

The California Supreme Court has declined to review the peti­tions of two Los Angeles County defen­dants who had …

Arbitrariness

Sep 13, 2019

As the September 11, 2019 Pennsylvania Supreme Court argu­ment date approached in two cas­es chal­leng­ing the…

Arbitrariness

Sep 12, 2019

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court (mem­bers pic­tured) heard oral argu­ment on September 11, 2019 on whether to exer­cise its extra­or­di­nary ​“King’s Bench” pow­ers to deter­mine whether the death penal­ty, as cur­rent­ly applied in the Commonwealth, vio­lates t…

Lethal Injection

Sep 11, 2019

Saying that ​“suf­fo­ca­tion does not qual­i­fy as ​‘severe pain and need­less suf­fer­ing,’” a fed­er­al appeals court in Ohio has ruled that the state’s three-drug exe­cu­tion pro­to­col does not vio­late the con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­hi­bi­tion against c…

Intellectual Disability

Sep 10, 2019

Texas exe­cut­ed Mark Soliz (pic­tured) on September 10, 2019, after a fed­er­al appeals court denied him a stay and dis­missed his claim that his life­long men­tal impair­ments result­ing from fetal alco­hol syn­drome should…

Religion

Sep 09, 2019

A coali­tion of nation­al and local Jewish orga­ni­za­tions and lawyers have asked the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to stop the sched­uled October 10, 2019 exe­cu­tion of a Jewish death-row pris­on­er to review his claim that the judge b…

Sep 09, 2019

NEWS — September 10: Texas’ exe­cu­tion of Mark Soliz was the 1505^th exe­cu­tion in the U.S. since the rein­state­ment of the death penal­ty in the 1970s. Texas has car­ried out 37.5% of all exe­cu­tions dur­ing that peri­od. It was the 15^th ex…

Innocence

Sep 06, 2019

Thirty-three years after a tri­al a fed­er­al appeals court described as ​“a mix­ture of dis­turb­ing pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct and woe­ful­ly inad­e­quate assis­tance of coun­sel,” a Las Vegas tri­al court freed Paul Browning (…

Race

Sep 05, 2019

Thirty-two years after he was sen­tenced to death in a tri­al taint­ed by pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, Tennessee death-row pris­on­er Abu-Ali Abdur’Rahman (pic­tured) has been resen­tenced to life in prison…