Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In its unprece­dent­ed rush to exe­cute eight pris­on­ers over an eleven-day peri­od in April 2017, Arkansas may have exe­cut­ed an inno­cent man. Civil rights and legal reform orga­ni­za­tions filed a state Freedom of Information Act law­suit on January 23, 2020 on behalf of the broth­er of Ledell Lee (pic­tured), a man Arkansas exe­cut­ed on April 20, 2017. The law­suit argues that DNA and fin­ger­print evi­dence that courts blocked the defense from…

Death row and the num­ber of pris­on­ers fac­ing active death sen­tences in the U.S. con­tin­ue to decline, accord­ing to the lat­est quar­ter­ly sur­vey of death row by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund…

Keith Tharpe — an African American sen­tenced to death 29 years ago by a jury that includ­ed a mem­ber who called him the​“N‑word” and doubt­ed whether​“Black peo­ple even have souls”— died on Georgia’s death row January 24, 2020. He was 61 years old. In a press state­ment, his lawyers from the Georgia Death Penalty Resource Center said he had been suf­fer­ing from can­cer and like­ly died of complications…

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…

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…

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…

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…