Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

After 12 years as Orleans Parish, Louisiana District Attorney, Leon Cannizzaro (pic­tured) has announced that he will not seek re-elec­­tion and will be retir­ing as D.A. at the end of this term. Cannizzaro’s tenure in office was marked by his aggres­sive defense of pri­or offi­cial mis­con­duct in cap­i­tal cas­es, mis­con­duct by his office while he was District Attorney, and rev­e­la­tions that Orleans Parish pros­e­cu­tors had rou­tine­ly issued fake subpoenas…

The death penalty is ​“a los­ing sit­u­a­tion for every­body,” actress and Clemency star Alfre Woodard said in a recent Screen Actors Guild — American Federation of Television and Radio Artists inter­net forum. ​“It does not bring back the per­son who has been tak­en vio­lent­ly. It doesn’t. It destroys…

Long-run­n­ing exe­cu­tion law­suits have set­tled in Arizona and California, as a renewed chal­lenge to the state’s revised lethal-injec­­tion pro­to­col has ramped up in…

In a pri­ma­ry elec­tion that was regard­ed by many as a ref­er­en­dum on reform pros­e­cu­tors, St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner (pic­tured) beat back a chal­lenge by the circuit’s for­mer chief homi­cide pros­e­cu­tor, Mary Pat Carl. Election returns from the August 4, 2020, Democratic pri­ma­ry in St. Louis showed Gardner, the city’s first African-American Circuit Attorney, with 61% of the vote, while Carl received…

The only woman on Oregon​’s death row has been resen­tenced to life in prison. On August 3, 2020, the Lane County Circuit Court accept­ed a set­tle­ment agree­ment in which Lane County pros­e­cu­tors agreed to drop their appeal of a 2019 rul­ing over­turn­ing the death sen­tence imposed on Angela McAnulty (pic­tured) in February 2011 and McAnulty agreed to drop her appeals of her murder…

A pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has over­turned the death sen­tence imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (pic­tured) for his role in the April 2013 Boston Marathon bomb­ing that killed three peo­ple and injured more than 250…

A promi­nent South Georgia pros­e­cu­tor, laud­ed for his suc­cess in cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions, has a his­to­ry of mis­con­duct in those cas­es, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution inves­tiga­tive report has dis­closed. Longtime Brunswick Judicial Circuit Assistant District Attorney John B. Johnson III, who joined the five-coun­­ty prosecutor’s office in 1977, ​“has a dark lega­cy of prob­lem cas­es,” the paper reports, includ­ing repeat­ed­ly with­hold­ing evi­dence from the defense…

The U.S. gov­ern­ment has set an August 26, 2020 exe­cu­tion date for the sole Native American on fed­er­al death row, against the wish­es of his tribe, the vic­tims’ fam­i­ly, and the local U.S. Attorney’s office that prosecuted the…

Recent police and vig­i­lante killings of Black Americans have ignit­ed a nation­al call for sys­temic reform of law enforce­ment across the coun­try, high­light­ing the link between extra­ju­di­cial abuse of force and wide­spread dis­crim­i­na­to­ry appli­ca­tion of unnec­es­sar­i­ly harsh legal pun­ish­ments against peo­ple of col­or. In the wake of these mur­ders, Maryland pub­lic defend­er Kristina Leslie (pic­tured) writes, “[m]eaningful and equi­table crim­i­nal jus­tice reform … must include abolishing…