Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Jefferson County District Attorney Danny Carr has filed an ami­cus brief sup­port­ing the grant of a new tri­al to Toforest Johnson (pic­tured, cen­ter, with fam­i­ly mem­bers), sen­tenced to death for the mur­der of an Alabama sheriff’s deputy. In a plead­ing filed in the Jefferson County Circuit Court, Carr wrote that, ​“A prosecutor’s duty is not mere­ly to secure con­vic­tions, but to seek jus­tice,” and that duty, he said, ​“requires inter­ven­tion in this…

A new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has doc­u­ment­ed a strong link between indi­vid­u­als who hold dehu­man­iz­ing belief sys­tems and sup­port for capital…

Florida death-row exoneree Clifford Williams, Jr. (pic­tured), who was freed in 2019 after spend­ing 43 years in prison, will receive $2.15 mil­lion in com­pen­sa­tion from the state of Florida under a bill signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis on June 9, 2020. The bill, specif­i­cal­ly tai­lored to com­pen­sate Williams, unan­i­mous­ly passed both cham­bers of the Florida legislature in…

Bobby Moore (pic­tured), the man at the cen­ter of a case that altered how Texas deter­mines intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty in death-penal­­ty cas­es, has been grant­ed parole after spend­ing 40 years in prison. He served near­ly all of that sen­tence on Texas’ death…

Twenty-eight years after Philadelphia pros­e­cu­tors first sought to take his life for the mur­der of four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn, Walter Ogrod (pic­tured, sec­ond from right, with mem­bers of his defense team) has been exon­er­at­ed from Pennsylvania​’s death…

The North Carolina Supreme Court has struck down the state legislature’s attempt­ed retroac­tive repeal of the state’s Racial Justice Act (RJA), restor­ing the rights of approx­i­mate­ly 140 death-row pris­on­ers to seek redress of death sen­tences that they had claimed were sub­stan­tial­ly affect­ed by racial…

Texas death-row pris­on­er Ruben Gutierrez (pic­tured) has asked the Texas state courts to stay his exe­cu­tion because of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic as fed­er­al lit­i­ga­tion con­tin­ues on his efforts to obtain DNA test­ing and to require Texas to per­mit him to have a chap­lain present in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber if his execution…

U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker on June 1, 2020 denied a chal­lenge brought by Arkansas death-row pris­on­ers to the use of the con­tro­ver­sial drug mida­zo­lam in car­ry­ing out exe­cu­tions. The rul­ing fol­lowed a two-week hear­ing on the issue held in May 2019. Lawyers for the pris­on­ers had argued that mida­zo­lam does not ade­quate­ly anes­thetize a pris­on­er dur­ing an exe­cu­tion before the sec­ond and third drugs, a par­a­lyt­ic drug and a drug that stops the heart, are admin­is­tered. An…

Atlanta is poised to become the lat­est in a grow­ing num­ber of U.S. cities in which pros­e­cu­tors have pledged not to seek the death penal­ty or to use it more…

State appeal courts in Nevada and Pennsylvania have barred the retri­al of two for­mer death-row pris­on­ers as a result of pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct, paving the way for their…