Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In this month’s episode of Discussions with DPIC, Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with Elisabeth Semel, Clinical Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley (pic­tured). Professor Semel joined Berkeley Law in 2001 as the first direc­tor of the school’s death penal­ty clin­ic and remains the clinic’s co-direc­­tor, where stu­dents have rep­re­sent­ed indi­vid­u­als fac­ing cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and writ­ten ami­cus briefs in death penal­ty cas­es before the United States Supreme…

On April 18, 2024, the Arkansas Supreme Court decid­ed 4 – 3 to reverse a 2022 low­er court deci­sion and allow genet­ic test­ing of crime scene evi­dence from the 1993 killing of three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis. The three men con­vict­ed in 1994 for the killings were released in 2011 after tak­ing an Alford plea, in which they main­tained their inno­cence but plead guilty to the crime, in exchange for 18 years’ time served and 10 years of a suspended…

On April 22, 2024, Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced that her office was ordered by a fed­er­al judge to review 35 death penal­ty con­vic­tions after the dis­clo­sure of evi­dence that sev­er­al pros­e­cu­tors inten­tion­al­ly exclud­ed Black and Jewish peo­ple from serv­ing on a cap­i­tal mur­der tri­al in 1995. In a press con­fer­ence, DA Price indi­cat­ed that her office dis­cov­ered the hand­writ­ten notes of for­mer pros­e­cu­tors that include dis­crim­i­na­to­ry jury selec­tion tac­tics, suggesting…

Monique Hicks, one of the twelve peo­ple who served on the Alabama jury that con­vict­ed Toforest Johnson and sen­tenced him to death, said in an op-ed pub­lished on April 22, 2024 that she now believes Mr. Johnson deserves a new tri­al. Ms. Hicks recounts the new evi­dence that has come to light in the case and writes, ​“My role in the wrong­ful con­vic­tion of an inno­cent man keeps me awake at…

A new report issued April 17, 2024 by the UK-based inter­na­tion­al human rights orga­ni­za­tion Reprieve found racial dis­par­i­ties in the occur­rence of botched exe­cu­tions in the United States. As report­ed in The Guardian, Reprieve ana­lyzed all lethal injec­tion exe­cu­tions between 1976 and 2023. It chron­i­cled 73 con­firmed botched pro­ce­dures and found that 8% of exe­cu­tions of Black peo­ple were botched (37 times out of 465 exe­cu­tions), com­pared with 4% for white peo­ple (28 out of…

On April 16, 2024, the Louisiana Senate Judiciary B Committee unan­i­mous­ly vot­ed to advance a bill that would remove nitro­gen hypox­ia from the state’s avail­able meth­ods of exe­cu­tion. Introduced by state Senator Katrina Jackson-Andrews, Senate Bill 430 is sup­port­ed by the Jews Against Gassing Coalition, an orga­ni­za­tion con­sist­ing of Jewish Louisiana res­i­dents who oppose state-sanc­­tioned gas executions. ​“We rec­og­nize, of course, that the gassing of inno­cent vic­tims in the Holocaust is quite…

On April 12, 2024, Judge Arturo Nelson signed an Agreed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law sub­mit­ted by the pros­e­cu­tion and defense stat­ing that Melissa Lucio (pic­tured) was not giv­en access to favor­able infor­ma­tion in the prosecution’s pos­ses­sion at the time of tri­al. The acknowl­edge­ment of this con­sti­tu­tion­al error result­ed in Judge Nelson’s rec­om­men­da­tion to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) that Ms. Lucio’s con­vic­tion and death sen­tence be over­turned. The rul­ing marks the…

On April 12, 2024, Long Island University cel­e­brat­ed the 2023 George Polk Awards in Journalism, hon­or­ing inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ists and rec­og­niz­ing six­teen for­mer win­ners, includ­ing for­mer­ly death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er Wilbert Rideau. Mr. Rideau spent forty-four years incar­cer­at­ed in Louisiana’s Angola State Penitentiary where he cre­at­ed The Lifer, one of the first Black prison peri­od­i­cals. Sentenced to death in 1961 at age nine­teen, Mr. Rideau spent twelve years on death row before the…

During the April 7, 2024, episode of ​“Last Week Tonight,” host John Oliver focused on ​“grim devel­op­ments” in the death penal­ty since his last seg­ment cov­er­ing lethal injec­tion in 2019. Since then, 91 peo­ple have been exe­cut­ed, includ­ing 13 fed­er­al pris­on­ers dur­ing for­mer President Donald Trump’s administration. ​“Our fed­er­al and state gov­ern­ments have con­tin­ued to pur­sue ques­tion­ably legal and def­i­nite­ly hor­ri­fy­ing ways, that, again, I would argue they shouldn’t be doing at all,” Mr. Oliver…

On April 5, 2024, Cameron County District Attorney Luis Saenz and Innocence Project attor­ney Vanessa Potkin released a joint state­ment regard­ing Melissa Lucio’s case, which has been pend­ing addi­tion­al review for almost two years. On January 11, 2023, the par­ties sub­mit­ted an Agreed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law stat­ing that the defense was not giv­en access to favor­able infor­ma­tion in the prosecution’s pos­ses­sion at tri­al, an error that they agree should enti­tle Ms. Lucio to a new…