Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In a case long marred by prosecutorial misconduct, the Missouri Supreme Court has denied a stay of execution for Walter Barton (pictured), rejecting his claims of innocence and incompetence to be executed. The court’s ruling on April 27, 2020 made no mention of Barton’s additional request to put off his execution because of public health dangers relating to the coronavirus pandemic. If Barton’s execution is carried out as scheduled on May 19, it would be the first in the nation since the…

Conservative commentator Drew Johnson (pictured) has a suggestion for states whose budgets have been gutted by declining tax revenue and rising costs related to the coronavirus pandemic: end the death penalty. In an April 23, 2020 op-ed for conservative news outlet Townhall, Johnson writes, “As state policymakers put programs on the chopping block in an attempt to balance budgets, there’s one failed policy that should be first to go: the death penalty.” Johnson, a Senior Scholar at the…

UPDATE: Arizona has experienced the first known COVID-19 death-row fatality and the coronavirus is spreading on the state’s death row, lawyers for the prisoners have said. Alfonso Salazar died from the virus on April 30, 2020, seven other death-row prisoners on death row in the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence have tested positive for coronavirus, and eleven others who have not been tested are showing symptoms of COVID-19, Dale Baich, chief of the federal defender capital habeas unit…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has stayed the May 6, 2020 execution of Edward Busby (pictured) for sixty days. Busby’s was the nation’s seventh execution postponed in the United States because of the coronavirus and the sixth in Texas. The stay, issued on April 27, marked the 26^th execution date in the first half of 2020 to be halted. By contrast, five executions have been carried out with three others — two in Texas and one in Missouri — still pending before the end of June. The court’s…

A federal judge has ruled that a civil rights lawsuit against a detective who allegedly framed a Kentucky woman for a murder she was physically incapable of committing may proceed to a jury trial. On April 1, 2020, U.S. District Court Judge Claria Horn Boom denied a motion filed by former Kentucky State Police detective Todd Harwood to dismiss claims of malicious prosecution brought by Susan Jean King (pictured) in connection with the murder of Kyle Breeden in 1998. King alleges that Harwood…

The release of a former Virginia death-row prisoner has been delayed after police organizations demanded an inquiry into the Virginia Parole Board decision to grant parole to Vincent Lamont Martin (pictured), convicted of the 1979 murder of a Richmond police officer. Martin, who has been eligible for parole for 26 years, had been scheduled to be released on April 30, 2020 following a parole grant approved by a supermajority of the parole board earlier in the month. News reports indicate that…

Executions across the globe fell 5% worldwide in 2019 to the fewest in more than a decade, despite a record number of executions in Saudi Arabia, Amnesty International reported in the human rights organization’s Global Report: Death Sentences and Executions in 2019. The Amnesty report, released April 21, 2020, detailed rising political abuse of the death penalty in the Middle East, but said the region’s increased executions were offset by declines in executions in the Asia-Pacific region and…

Seventy-nine-year-old James Frazier (pictured) is Ohio’s oldest death-row prisoner. He has dementia, he cannot walk, and he requires the assistance of aides to complete daily tasks. Because of his special medical needs, he is incarcerated at the Franklin Medical Center, rather than on Ohio’s death row at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution. Ohio is scheduled to execute him on October 20, 2021. An April 19, 2020 story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer highlights Franklin’s case and the growing…

Jerry Givens (pictured), who performed 62 executions during his time as a Virginia corrections officer, but later became an activist against the death penalty, died April 13, 2020 of COVID-19. He was 67 years old. During his 17 years (1982 – 1999) as a member of Virginia’s execution team, the commonwealth performed more executions than any other state except Texas. Though he swore an oath not to tell even his family about his role as executioner until he left his corrections position, Givens…