Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Three pro­fes­sion­al orga­ni­za­tions and eight prac­ti­tion­ers in the fields of neu­ro­science and neu­ropsy­chol­o­gy have joined a Texas death-row pris­on­er in chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s use of​“future dan­ger­ous­ness” find­ings to impose the death penal­ty on defen­dants who were younger than age 21 at the time of their offense. Their brief, filed in the U.S. Supreme Court on June 19, 2020, argues based on “[t]he great weight of scientific evidence”…

At least 1,300 pris­on­ers have been impris­oned on U.S. death rows for more than two decades, in vio­la­tion of U.S. human rights oblig­a­tions, a Death Penalty Information Center report on death-row incar­cer­a­tion prac­tices has found. The num­ber rep­re­sents more than half of all U.S. death-row pris­on­ers as of January 1, 2020. Nearly one third of the pris­on­ers whose lengthy death-row incar­cer­a­tions vio­late their human rights are on death row…

As high-pro­­­file sup­port mounts in the cam­paign for clemen­cy for death-row pris­on­er Julius Jones (pic­tured), the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board has turned to the pros­e­cu­tors who are seek­ing his exe­cu­tion — the Oklahoma Attorney General’s office — for advice on whether it can con­sid­er his peti­tion at all. The ques­tion fac­ing the board is whether Oklahoma law per­mits it to con­duct clemen­cy pro­ceed­ings for a death-row pris­on­er who does…

Utah has become the lat­est U.S. state to have gone more than a decade with­out car­ry­ing out an exe­cu­tion. The state last put a pris­on­er to death on June 18, 2010, when it exe­cut­ed Ronnie Gardner…

By a vote of 6 – 3, the U.S. Supreme Court over­turned a Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) rul­ing uphold­ing the death sen­tence imposed on Terence Andrus (pic­tured). The Court held that Andrus’ coun­sel had pro­vid­ed sub­stan­dard rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the penal­­­ty-phase of his tri­al, and direct­ed the TCCA to deter­mine whether counsel’s defi­cient per­for­mance may have affect­ed the jury’s sentencing…

With a peti­tion for review pend­ing before the U.S. Supreme Court on the legal­i­ty and con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the fed­er­al exe­cu­tion pro­to­col, U.S. Attorney General William Barr on June 15, 2020 set exe­cu­tion dates for four fed­er­al death-row pris­on­ers, includ­ing three who are involved in the pend­ing case. The war­rants sched­uled three exe­cu­tions over a five-day peri­od in July and a fourth exe­cu­tion in late August. No fed­er­al exe­cu­tions have been…

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…

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…

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…

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…