Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The Mississippi Supreme Court has grant­ed a new tri­al to death-row pris­on­er Eddie Lee Howard, Jr. (pic­tured), find­ing that the com­bi­na­tion of sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly invalid bite-mark evi­dence used to con­vict him and new DNA evi­dence enti­tled him to a new tri­al in the 1992 mur­der and alleged rape of an 84-year-old…

More pris­on­ers in the United States have died in the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic than have been exe­cut­ed in the coun­try in past two decades, new prison data shows, and more California death-row pris­on­ers have been killed by the virus than have been exe­cut­ed in the…

A Florida tri­al court has freed a for­mer death-row pris­on­er after local pros­e­cu­tors said new DNA evi­dence had proven his inno­cence of the rape and mur­der for which he was wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death…

Over the objec­tions of Native American lead­ers across the coun­try, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment on August 26, 2020 exe­cut­ed Lezmond Mitchell (pic­tured), the sole Native-American pris­on­er on fed­er­al death row. Mitchell, a Navajo cit­i­zen, became the first Native American exe­cut­ed by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment for a crime com­mit­ted against a mem­ber of his own tribe…

As the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment began to car­ry out the sec­ond round of exe­cu­tions it has sched­uled for 2020, autop­sy results from the first round of exe­cu­tions in July sug­gest to a​“vir­tu­al med­ical cer­tain­ty” that fed­er­al death-row pris­on­ers will expe­ri­ence​“excru­ci­at­ing pain” while they are being put to death by lethal injection with…

Ruling in one of the most sen­sa­tion­al­ized tri­als of the ear­ly 2000s, the California Supreme Court has over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Scott Peterson for the mur­ders of his preg­nant wife, Laci, and their unborn son in December 2002. The court upheld Peterson’s convictions for…

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and American Civil Liberties Foundation have filed a law­suit against the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) seek­ing a court order requir­ing the BOP to dis­close how much the fed­er­al government’s resump­tion of fed­er­al exe­cu­tions is cost­ing tax­pay­ers and what steps the gov­ern­ment has under­tak­en to assess and address the COVID-19 pub­lic health risks cre­at­ed by the exe­cu­tions.​“As the nation faces both dire public…

Declaring that “[r]acism still exists and has no place in soci­ety,” the Tennessee Supreme Court on June 25, 2020 direct­ed its Access to Justice Commission (AJC) to cre­ate​“a new ini­tia­tive to iden­ti­fy and elim­i­nate bar­ri­ers to racial and eth­nic fair­ness and jus­tice.” The court’s pro­nounce­ment, at the height of the racial jus­tice protests that swept the nation fol­low­ing the mur­der of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police offi­cer, was meant to signal…

As fed­er­al courts in Washington, D.C. and California declined to halt the exe­cu­tion of Lezmond Mitchell, the National Congress of American Indians, thir­teen trib­al gov­ern­ments, and more than 230 mem­bers from more than 90 U.S. tribes joined Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez in ask­ing President Donald Trump to com­mute the death sen­tence of the sole Native American on fed­er­al death row. Native-American…

In a polit­i­cal maneu­ver that fur­ther inject­ed issues of race, gen­der, and polit­i­cal dis­en­fran­chise­ment into local law enforce­ment pol­i­cy, Missouri’s Republican Governor Mike Parson has asked state law­mak­ers to grant Republican state attor­ney gen­er­al Eric Schmitt author­i­ty to pros­e­cute mur­der cas­es in the city of St. Louis. The pro­pos­al tar­get­ed cas­es that are cur­rent­ly under the exclu­sive purview of…