Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

As state leg­is­la­tures in Ohio and Washington con­tem­plate the future of their death-penal­­­ty statutes, major news­pa­pers in each of the states are advocating legislative…

Andre Thomas (pic­tured) is a Texas death-row pris­on­er riv­en with schiz­o­phre­nia so severe that, in sep­a­rate inci­dents, he gouged out both of his eyes and ate one of them. The U.S. Court of Appeals heard oral argu­ment on February 5, 2020, about whether his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence should be over­turned because his lawyers failed to present evi­dence that he was incom­pe­tent to be tried, failed to present mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence of Thomas’…

Why is the death penal­ty pur­sued and imposed in some cas­es and not in oth­ers that, at first glance, seem facial­ly indis­tin­guish­able? Surveying the aca­d­e­m­ic lit­er­a­ture, Daniel Medwed, the University Distinguished Professor of Law and Criminal Justice at Northeastern University School of Law, points to one of the fac­tors that​“seeps into charg­ing and sen­tenc­ing deci­sions in mean­ing­ful and dis­turb­ing ways“ — race: first, the race of the vic­tim and then…

The last three men sched­uled for exe­cu­tion in Georgia said they did not com­mit the killing and that DNA test­ing that was not avail­able at the time of tri­al could prove it. In two of the cas­es, vic­tim fam­i­ly mem­bers sup­port­ed the request for test­ing. Prosecutors opposed the requests, and the courts refused to allow the test­ing. Two of the three men were exe­cut­ed, with doubts still swirling as…

Three groups, rep­re­sent­ing pros­e­cu­tors, the Catholic Church, and polit­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tives, have filed briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court sup­port­ing the efforts of Florida death-row pris­on­er James Dailey (pic­tured) to obtain judi­cial review of his inno­cence claim. Dailey filed a peti­tion for cer­tio­rari on January 10, 2020 ask­ing the Supreme Court to hear his case, after the Florida courts refused to con­sid­er evi­dence that anoth­er man had confessed…

As the death penal­ty con­tin­ues to wilt across the coun­try, what­ev­er peno­log­i­cal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion it once pur­port­ed­ly served is dying as well, say cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment schol­ars Carol Steiker and Jordan Steiker (pic­tured). In their new arti­cle The Rise, Fall, and Afterlife of the Death Penalty in the United States in the January 2020 Annual Review of Criminology, the Steikers exam­ine four cen­tral issues in the rise and fall…

Calling the death penal­ty​“a failed gov­ern­ment pro­gram,” 21 cur­rent and for­mer Virginia pros­e­cu­tors have signed on to a let­ter to the commonwealth’s General Assembly urg­ing the leg­is­la­ture to abol­ish cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The let­ter was signed by for­mer Attorneys General Mark L. Earley, Sr., a Republican who presided over 36 exe­cu­tions dur­ing 13 years in office, and Democrat William G. Broaddus, nine cur­rent or for­mer Commonwealth’s Attorneys elect­ed across the…

For the third con­sec­u­tive year, the Washington State Senate has vot­ed to remove the death penal­ty from the state’s statute books. In a 28 – 18 vote praised by abo­li­tion advo­cates for its bipar­ti­san­ship, four sen­ate Republicans joined 24 of their Democratic col­leagues on January 30, 2020 to for­mal­ly repeal Washington’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment law. With a new Speaker replac­ing Democratic lead­er­ship who had pre­vent­ed the bill from com­ing up for a vote in the House in 2018 and…

In leg­isla­tive votes 1,600 miles apart on January 30, 2020, state sen­ates in Colorado and Virginia took his­toric steps toward abol­ish­ing or reform­ing their state death-penalty…

After near­ly two decades of cap­i­tal tri­als and death-penal­­­ty rever­sals, for­mer Florida death-row pris­on­er David Snelgrove has been resen­tenced to life in prison with­out parole. His three sen­tenc­ing tri­als pro­vid­ed a barom­e­ter of the impact of the United States Supreme Court and Florida Supreme Court deci­sions in Hurst v. Florida and Hurst v. State, and the lengths to which pros­e­cu­tors were will­ing to go in attempts to keep…