Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The U.S. federal government ended its 17-year hiatus between executions on July 14, 2020, putting Daniel Lewis Lee (pictured) to death moments after overnight rulings by the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit vacated prior court orders that had placed the execution on hold. Two more executions are scheduled this week, with a fourth set for August. Although Lee’s death warrant expired at midnight on July 13, the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) attempted to…

As the U.S. Department of Justice seeks to resume federal executions after a 17-year hiatus, the government’s rushed timeframe, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and unresolved issues involving the lethal-injection protocol, and the victims’ family’s rights have combined with alleged constitutional violations in the cases of the three prisoners slated for execution this week to produce a chaotic whirlwind of last-minute litigation. Federal courts facing compressed timelines have issued rulings…

As the scheduled July 13, 2020 date for the first federal executions in 17 years approaches, faith leaders, diplomats, and legal experts have asked the federal government to call them off. 1,000 faith leaders from across the country have urged President Trump and Attorney General Barr to halt the executions. They are joined by the European Union, which on July 10 also issued a statement strongly opposing the resumption of federal executions. Complementing their efforts, two recent op-eds by…

The United States Supreme Court has vacated the conviction of a Native American death-row prisoner in Oklahoma, giving dramatic effect to a sweeping new decision that affirmed the sovereignty of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation over tribal lands that span the eastern half of the state. In an historic ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma, the Court declared that Congress had never disestablished the Creek Reservation that was created by a series of treaties between 1832 and 1866 in the aftermath of the…

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to step in to resolve festering disputes about the scope of the protections its prior rulings afford to intellectually disabled death-row prisoners. On July 2, 2020, the Court denied petitions to review three such cases, allowing death sentences in Alabama and Tennessee to stand despite the application of unconstitutionally restrictive standards in assessing a prisoner’s intellectual disability, while rebuffing Oklahoma’s efforts to undo a lower court ruling…

Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. (pictured), the “Golden State Killer,” whom prosecutors had one year earlier held out as a “poster child for the death penalty,” has pleaded guilty to 13 counts each of murder and rape in exchange for multiple life sentences. At a June 29, 2020 hearing, the 74-year-old former police officer admitted to a total of 161 crimes involving 48 victims, including dozens of rapes that could not be charged because the statute of limitations on prosecuting them had long ago…

Former Pennsylvania death-row prisoner Kareem Johnson has been exonerated, thirteen years after being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death by a Philadelphia jury. On July 1, 2020, the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas completed his exoneration, formally entering an order dismissing all charges against him in his capital case. On May 19, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had barred his reprosecution because of prosecutorial misconduct that exhibited a conscious and reckless disregard for…

New death sentences and executions were at historic lows in the first half of 2020, the Death Penalty Information Center reported in its 2020 Mid-Year Review. The report, released July 2, attributed the record-low numbers to the combined effects of the coronavirus pandemic and a continuing broad national decline in the use of capital punishment. The report indicated that, even before the pandemic, the U.S. was poised for its sixth consecutive year with 50 or fewer new death sentences and 30 or…

Four California death-row prisoners are dead and more than 210 have been infected in a coronavirus outbreak that news reports say is “tearing through” the nation’s largest death row. Fueled by an influx of infected prisoners during a prison transfer at the end of May 2020, the COVID-19 virus has exploded through San Quentin State Prison (click to enlarge picture). As of July 2, nearly 1,400 San Quentin prisoners and more than 100 members of the prison staff had been infected. Sources tell DPIC…

In the June 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Henderson Hill (pictured), Senior Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union Capital Punishment Project, speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about North Carolina’s Racial Justice Act. Hill, who has spent decades as a public defender, capital defense attorney, and civil rights advocate, is currently representing North Carolina death-row prisoners in the Racial Justice Act litigation challenging their…