Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Official mis­con­duct and per­jury or false accu­sa­tion con­tin­ue to be the main rea­sons inno­cent men and women are wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed in America, accord­ing to the 2019 annu­al report by the National Registry of Exonerations. That mis­con­duct, the report indi­cates, is most preva­lent in cas­es involv­ing the most serious criminal…

Courts are fail­ing bad­ly in keep­ing junk psy­cho­log­i­cal sci­ence out of the court­room in crim­i­nal cas­es, per­mit­ting the admis­sion of psy­cho­log­i­cal tests that have nev­er been reviewed for reli­a­bil­i­ty and oth­ers that have been found unre­li­able, a recent study reports. Among the prob­lem­at­ic tests, anoth­er group of psy­chol­o­gists write, is a ​“psy­chopa­thy check­list” com­mon­ly used by pros­e­cu­tors to argue that a defen­dant pos­es a future dan­ger to soci­ety and should be sentenced to…

After ignor­ing health risks posed by lengthy court pro­ceed­ings dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic and fac­ing crit­i­cism that a cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tion fol­low­ing the state’s abo­li­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment would amount to a polit­i­cal­ly par­ti­san waste of tax­pay­er dol­lars, pros­e­cu­tors in Adams County, Colorado have announced that they will drop the death penal­ty in a high-pro­­file case involv­ing the killing of a sheriff’s…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has once again reject­ed the find­ings of a tri­al court that a death-row pris­on­er was enti­tled to relief from his con­vic­tion or death…

After receiv­ing unan­i­mous sup­port in the Florida House of Representatives, a bill that would have expand­ed access to post­con­vic­tion DNA test­ing failed in the Florida Senate when the leg­isla­tive body adjourned its 2020 leg­isla­tive ses­sion with­out tak­ing up the…

The pub­lic health cri­sis from the COVID-19 coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic has halt­ed exe­cu­tions in the United States and, legal experts say, is like­ly to con­tin­ue to do for the foreseeable…

In a deci­sion that exposed the deep divide between the United States and its European allies on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment issues, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom unan­i­mous­ly ruled that the British gov­ern­ment unlaw­ful­ly pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion to the United States about two sus­pect­ed Islamic State mem­bers with­out first obtain­ing assur­ances that the infor­ma­tion would not be used to impose or car­ry out the death…

Georgia death-row pris­on­er Billy Daniel Raulerson, Jr. (pic­tured) is ask­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a state law that, he argues, is per­mit­ting Georgia to uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly exe­cute indi­vid­u­als with Intellectual Disability. On March 27, 2020, the Court is sched­uled to con­sid­er whether to hear the case of Raulerson v. Warden and to review the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of Georgia’s evi­den­tiary require­ment that cap­i­tal defen­dants prove they are…

On March 23, 2020, Colorado became the 22^nd U.S. state to abol­ish the death penal­ty, as Governor Jared Polis (pic­tured) signed leg­is­la­tion repeal­ing the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment statute and com­mut­ed the sen­tences of the state’s three death-row pris­on­ers to life with­out pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole. The state was the tenth to leg­isla­tive­ly or judi­cial­ly abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in the past fifteen…

A Birmingham judge has denied a new tri­al to Alabama death-row pris­on­er Toforest Johnson (pic­tured, cen­ter), say­ing he had not proven his claim that his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence for the killing of a sheriff’s deputy in 1995 were the prod­uct of prosecutorial…