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 case. In a March 18 Motion for Stay of Execution Due to COVID-19 Pandemic and an April 8…

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 confinement. The court approval comes nearly five months after the Department of Corrections agreed to a tentative change to the conditions of incarceration. In a 14-page Memorandum and Order, Judge John E. Jones III of the United States…

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 cases. The new Netflix documentary series, The Innocence Files, will debut on April 15, with its first episode featuring the case of Texas death-row exoneree Alfred DeWayne Brown. The fifth season of CNN’s series, Death Row Stories, will premiere on April 19 with an episode that…

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 punishment. McCann was elected DA in 2016, as part of a nationwide wave of reform-oriented prosecutors. Both as prosecutor and in her eight years in the Colorado legislature, McCann has advocated for broad criminal justice reforms, including the abolition of the death penalty. In her…

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 purposes. In an open letter from nine prominent public health experts released April 10, 2020, the medical experts explain that the sedatives and paralytics…

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 open the possibility of judicial review in the state…

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 row. On April 8, 2020, Fahy submitted an affidavit and a brief supporting the parties’ efforts to persuade Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Shelley Robins New to address uncontested innocence…

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 trial. In a decision issued on April 3, 2020, the court unanimously affirmed a trial court ruling dismissing death-row prisoner Jeffrey Hessler’s challenge to the state’s three-judge capital sentencing process. Under Nebraska law, if a defendant is convicted of capital murder, a jury determines whether aggravating…

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 years. In a fractured ruling with three separate opinions and no rationale for its decision commanding a majority, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted 2 – 1 on April 7, 2020 to vacate the preliminary injunction that had blocked the federal government from carrying out four executions in…

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 destroyed. Bonnell was scheduled to be executed February 12, 2020, but received a reprieve in December 2019 because of what Governor Mike DeWine described as “ongoing problems” in obtaining execution drugs. Saying…