Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The Tennessee Supreme Court has stayed the June 4, 2020 exe­cu­tion of death-row pris­on­er Oscar Franklin Smith (pic­tured) and resched­uled his exe­cu­tion for February 4, 2021. The order, issued on April 17, 2020, grant­ed a stay request filed by Smith’s lawyers, who had sought a post­pone­ment on the grounds that, because of the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic, they had lost ​“crit­i­cal time” for inves­ti­ga­tion in the…

A fed­er­al dis­trict court judge has approved a set­tle­ment of a class action chal­lenge to the con­di­tions of con­fine­ment on Pennsylvania’s death row that offi­cial­ly ends the state’s pol­i­cy of manda­to­ry incar­cer­a­tion of death-row pris­on­ers in permanent solitary…

Beginning April 15, 2020, two tele­vi­sion series — one a new pro­gram from Netflix and the oth­er new episodes of a return­ing series from CNN — will high­light sto­ries of wrong­ful con­vic­tions, includ­ing some death-penalty…

In the April 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Denver District Attorney Beth McCann (pic­tured) speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about Colorado’s repeal of capital…

As hos­pi­tals through­out the coun­try face short­ages of cru­cial med­ica­tions need­ed to treat patients with COVID-19, a group of lead­ing anes­the­si­ol­o­gists, phar­ma­cists and med­ical aca­d­e­mics is ask­ing cor­rec­tions offi­cials in death-penal­­ty states to turn over stock­piles of their exe­cu­tion drugs to hos­pi­tals so they can be used for therapeutic…

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the case of Jewish death-row pris­on­er Randy Halprin (pic­tured), who was tried and sen­tenced to death in Texas before a judge who made anti-Semitic and racist com­ments about Halprin and his co-defen­­dants. The April 6, 2020 deci­sion marked the sec­ond time in less than two months that the Court has declined to review a con­tro­ver­sial Texas death-penal­­ty case in the wake of stays of exe­cu­tion that left…

Saying she want­ed jus­tice for her mur­dered four-year-old daugh­ter, not ​“a closed case with an inno­cent per­son in jail,” Sharon Fahy has joined with the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and defense lawyers in the fight to imme­di­ate­ly free Walter Ogrod (pic­tured) from Pennsylvania​’s death…

The Nebraska Supreme Court has upheld the state’s death penal­ty law against a claim that its death-sen­­tenc­ing pro­ce­dure vio­lates cap­i­tal defen­dants’ Sixth Amendment right to a jury…

A bad­ly divid­ed fed­er­al court of appeals has lift­ed a court order that had pre­vent­ed the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment from resum­ing exe­cu­tions after a hia­tus of more than 16…

Ohio death-row pris­on­er Melvin Bonnell (pic­tured) has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to vacate his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence after his lawyers dis­cov­ered phys­i­cal evi­dence from his case that Cuyahoga County pros­e­cu­tors had repeat­ed­ly insist­ed since the mid-1990s had been lost or…