Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The federal government intends to continue its unprecedented execution spree into December, scheduling the executions of the first woman and the youngest offender put to death by federal authorities in nearly seven decades. In a Friday evening announcement, the U.S. Department of Justice announced on October 16, 2020 that it had set the execution of Lisa Montgomery (pictured) for December 8 and Brandon Bernard for December 10. Montgomery, a victim of sex trafficking who suffers from psychosis…

A divided Ohio Supreme Court has agreed to hear the appeals of two death-row prisoners who are challenging the legality of the state’s execution protocol. By votes of 4 – 3, the court on October 13, 2020 accepted for review appeals by Cleveland Jackson (pictured) and James O’Neal asserting that Ohio’s execution protocol is invalid because the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) adopted it in violation of state regulatory requirements. Under Ohio law, an executive-branch…

In the October 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, former Illinois Governor George Ryan speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about the events that persuaded him to commute the death sentences of all 167 death-row prisoners in Illinois in 2003. Ryan and Dunham delve into the Governor’s journey from death-penalty supporter as an Illinois state legislator to death-penalty opponent as Illinois governor, and discuss his new book, co-authored with…

A federal district court judge has issued an order moving closer to trial a lawsuit filed against a Utah county for the alleged retaliatory firing of a lawyer who had publicly criticized the county for refusing to adequately fund his client’s death-penalty appeal. In an opinion published September 30, 2020, Judge Howard C. Nielson, Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah denied a motion filed by lawyers for Weber County, Utah to dismiss a lawsuit filed by Samuel Newton…

Federal prosecutors have filed a petition in the U.S. Supreme Court asking the Court to review a federal appeals court ruling that overturned the death sentence imposed on Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (pictured) in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. On October 6, 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a petition for writ of certiorari challenging the July 31 ruling of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit that Tsarnaev’s right to an impartial jury had been denied when the trial judge failed…

A recent U.S. Supreme Court decision that affirmed the sovereignty of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation over tribal lands that span much of the eastern half of Oklahoma continues to reverberate through the state’s criminal justice system as prisoners sentenced for murders committed by or against Native Americans on tribal lands challenge the state’s authority to have prosecuted their cases. The Court’s July 9, 2020 decision in McGirt v. Oklahoma already has vacated the conviction and death sentence…

The U.S. Senate is preparing to move forward on October 12, 2020 with confirmation hearings on the controversial nomination of conservative federal appeals judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the Supreme Court vacancy caused by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. If confirmed, Judge Barrett would shift the center of the Court farther to the right, solidifying the hold of a conservative majority that has become increasingly hostile to constitutional challenges to death sentences and…

A new report by the National Registry of Exonerations has found that police or prosecutorial misconduct is rampant in death-row exoneration cases and occurs even more frequently when the wrongfully death-sentenced exoneree is Black. The report, Government Misconduct and Convicting the Innocent, released September 15, 2020, examined the factors contributing to 2,400 exonerations since 1989. It found that misconduct was present in more than half of all exonerations and nearly three-quarters of…

North Carolina’s death penalty is a weapon of social control rooted in a racist past. That is the message of a groundbreaking new collaborative project, Racist Roots: Origins of North Carolina’s Death Penalty, by the Durham-based defense organization Center for Death Penalty Litigation (CDPL). Through essays and academic articles containing in-depth analysis, photographs, archival news-clippings, poetry, and stirring personal narratives, the CDPL staff and a legion of notable contributors…

A new papal encyclical letter tells Catholics around the world that “[t]here can be no stepping back” from the Church’s formal opposition to the death penalty. Pope Francis’ October 3, 2020 encyclical, entitled Fratelli Tutti, rejected capital punishment as a “false answer[] that … ultimately do[es] no more than introduce new elements of destruction in the fabric of national and global society.” Citing centuries of death-penalty opposition by leading Catholic scholars and clergy and calling…