On September 5, 2024, Idaho’s Fourth Judicial District Court dis­missed death-sen­tenced pris­on­er Thomas Creech’s post-con­vic­tion claim, which sought to pre­vent a sec­ond exe­cu­tion attempt on the grounds that it would vio­late the Fifth Amendment’s dou­ble jeop­ardy clause, Eighth Amendment’s pro­hi­bi­tion against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment, and equiv­a­lent state con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sions. The state’s first attempt to exe­cute Mr. Creech on February 28, 2024 was halt­ed because cor­rec­tion­al staff…

Best-sell­ing author of The Innocent Man and for­mer crim­i­nal defense lawyer John Grisham ​“nev­er, not once” believed that any of the hun­dreds of clients he rep­re­sent­ed were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed. In a September 5, 2024, op-ed, Mr. Grisham writes that he just assumed the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem always got it right. Now, writ­ing for the sec­ond time about Robert Roberson’s case, Mr. Grisham acknowl­edges that was ​“a wrong assump­tion.” He argues that ​“Robert Roberson is inno­cent because the…

On August 28, 2024, a St. Louis County Circuit Court judge held an evi­den­tiary hear­ing for Marcellus Williams (pic­tured), who has long main­tained his inno­cence in the 1998 mur­der of Felicia Gayle. At this hear­ing, the office of St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney (PA) Wesley Bell con­ced­ed that the pri­or admin­is­tra­tion, under Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCullogh, com­mit­ted con­sti­tu­tion­al errors con­tribut­ing to Mr. Williams’ unre­li­able con­vic­tion and death sen­tence. These errors include the…

DPI’s new series focus­es on aca­d­e­m­ic research and arti­cles in the field of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. This month’s arti­cle is ​“Sacred Victims: Fifty Years of Data on Victim Race and Sex as Predictors of Execution,” in The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, co-authored by Professors Scott Phillips (Department of Sociology & Criminology), Justin Marceau, Sam Kamin, and a J.D. pro­gram alum­na, Nicole King, from the Sturm College of Law at the University of…

The Aprajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill, which out­lines the death penal­ty for rape result­ing in the victim’s death or ​“veg­e­ta­tive state,” was adopt­ed by the West Bengal gov­ern­ment in east­ern India on September 3, 2024. Under inter­na­tion­al law, it is unlaw­ful to pre­scribe the death penal­ty for a crime not meet­ing the ​“most seri­ous” crime (e.g., inten­tion­al murder)…