Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

A Florida state court judge has granted death-row prisoner James Dailey an evidentiary hearing on his claim that he did not commit the murder for which he was sentenced to death three decades ago. On February 20, 2020, Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Court Judge Pat Siracusa agreed to a defense request to present testimony from confessed killer Jack Pearcy that Dailey (pictured) — a veteran who served three tours of duty in Vietnam and another in Korea — had no involvement in the 1985 murder of 14-year-old…

Nebraska’s unicameral legislature voted on February 13, 2020 to advance a bill that would increase transparency in the state’s execution process. LB 238, which would allow witnesses to see the execution from the moment the prisoner enters the death chamber until the prisoner is declared dead or the execution is halted, passed an initial consideration by a 33 – 7 vote. It must pass a second vote in order to be submitted to the governor. The bill is a response to concerns about the state’s 2018…

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) has announced plans to allow some of the state’s death-sentenced prisoners to move from San Quentin’s death row to other state prisons that offer work and other rehabilitative programs. In what has been billed a “pilot program,” the eligible prisoners will be able to transfer to one of eight less costly high-security prisons that provide rehabilitative services. The death-sentenced prisoners who are transferred would be required…

Tennessee has scheduled three upcoming executions, despite ongoing litigation surrounding the use of its lethal injection protocol and problems with its lethal-injection drugs that have led five prisoners to opt for death by electrocution. Attorneys for five other death-row prisoners, including Oscar Smith, who has an execution date of June 4, 2020, have filed a federal suit presenting new evidence challenging the state’s execution protocol. Tennessee uses a three-drug protocol of midazolam, a…

DNA exonerated Ryan Matthews in 2004, after he had spent five years on death row at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola for a murder he did not commit. In December 2019, he received his college degree. “I’m so used to obstacles getting in my way,” Matthews, told Nola.com. “But that won’t stop me. When one door shuts, I work to get another one to open.” In a February 6, 2020 op-ed in The Advocate in which he describes his time on death row, Matthews lends his voice to opening doors for…

After a five-year hiatus, Oklahoma has announced plans to resume executions by returning to the same combination of lethal-injection drugs that were part of its execution protocol during a series of botched executions in 2014 and 2015. At a February 13, 2020 press conference, Governor Kevin Stitt, Attorney General Mike Hunter (pictured), and Department of Corrections Director Scott Crow announced that the state will return to a three-drug protocol of midazolam (a sedative), vecuronium bromide…

Rocky Myers (pictured) may be innocent and intellectually disabled, and his jury voted to sentence him to life. So why is he facing execution in Alabama? In the February 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, members of Myers’ legal team tell the story of how racial bias, poor representation, and judicial override led to the possible wrongful conviction of an intellectually disabled man. Assistant Federal Defender Kacey Keeton and Investigator Sara Romano speak with DPIC Managing Director Anne…

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 repeal. On February 6, 2020, following a state senate vote to formalize the Washington Supreme Court’s judicial abolition of the state’s death penalty, The Seattle Times editorial board urged the state House of Representatives to complete the job. “The state Supreme Court has struck down Washington’s death-penalty law, but it…

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’ extensive history of mental illness, and failed to object to…

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 race of the defendant. In a new article…