Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In a dra­mat­ic rever­sal made pos­si­ble by changes in court per­son­nel, the Florida Supreme Court has repu­di­at­ed its pri­or deci­sions requir­ing that cap­i­tal sen­tenc­ing juries unan­i­mous­ly agree to the death penal­ty before a tri­al judge may sen­tence a defen­dant to death. ​“Our court … got it wrong,” the jus­tices said, when it ruled in 2016 that death sen­tences imposed after non-unan­i­­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death vio­lat­ed the state and federal…

In a case pros­e­cu­tors now describe as a ​“per­fect storm” of injus­tice, Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­er Christopher Williams (pic­tured) and his co-defen­­dant Theophalis Wilson have been exon­er­at­ed of a 1989 triple mur­der in North…

Saying that Nicholas Sutton ​“has gone from a life-tak­er to a life-saver,” lawyers for the Tennessee death-row pris­on­er filed an appli­ca­tion for clemen­cy with Governor Bill Lee on January 14, 2020. The clemen­cy appli­ca­tion, which requests that Lee com­mute Sutton’s sen­tence to life with­out parole, con­tained affi­davits of sup­port from sev­en Tennessee cor­rec­tion­al offi­cials, mem­bers of the vic­tims’ fam­i­lies, and five of the jurors in the…

A DPIC analy­sis of exe­cu­tions and new death sen­tences in 2019 has found that even as death penal­ty usage declined across the United States, racial dis­par­i­ties in its application…

On Martin Luther King Day, DPIC looks at the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King’s views on the death…

The Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles has grant­ed clemen­cy to death-row pris­on­er Jimmy Meders (pic­tured). One day after his January 15, 2020 clemen­cy hear­ing, and just six hours before his sched­uled exe­cu­tion, the Board announced it had com­mut­ed Meders’ death sen­tence to a sen­tence of life with­out possibility of…

A three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit heard near­ly two hours of argu­ment on January 15, 2020 in four con­sol­i­dat­ed cas­es that could deter­mine whether the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment will be able to resume exe­cu­tions in 2020. The appeals pan­el — com­posed of Gregory G. Katsas and Neomi Rao, both appoint­ed by President Donald Trump, and David S. Tatel, appoint­ed by for­mer President Bill Clinton — sharply ques­tioned lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and four…

As Texas pre­pared to car­ry out the first exe­cu­tion of 2020 on January 15, neigh­bor­ing Oklahoma — once the sec­ond most pro­lif­ic exe­cu­tion­er in the United States — marked five years since its last exe­cu­tion. The states present a con­trast in exe­cu­tion prac­tices. Though the use of the death penal­ty has sharply declined in both states, Texas con­tin­ues to lead the nation in exe­cu­tions, while Oklahoma will join the near­ly two-thirds of death-penal­­ty states (18 of…

Just Mercy, the movie adap­ta­tion of Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) Executive Director Bryan Stevenson​’s book of the same name, cel­e­brat­ed its nation­wide release on January 10, 2020 with week­end tick­et sales of more than $9.7 mil­lion. The film, which focus­es on the wrong­ful con­vic­tion of Walter McMillian—one of Stevenson’s ear­ly death-penal­­ty cas­es — ranked fifth among all movies in domes­tic box office…

On January 16, Georgia plans to exe­cute Jimmy Meders (pic­tured in his National Guard uni­form), a man whom jurors say they would have sen­tenced to life with­out parole if that option had been avail­able and who, state sen­tenc­ing prac­tices sug­gest, would not face the death penal­ty today. For those rea­sons, Meders’ lawyers say in court plead­ings and an appli­ca­tion before the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, his exe­cu­tion would vio­late contemporary standards…