Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Calling the state’s death penalty ​“dys­func­tion­al,” ​“cost­ly,” and ​“immoral,” Oregon Governor Kate Brown (pic­tured, left, at sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny) on August 1, 2019 signed a bill sig­nif­i­cant­ly lim­it­ing the crimes for which cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment can be imposed in the state. The new law amends Oregon’s def­i­n­i­tion of death-eligible ​“aggra­vat­ed mur­der,” reduc­ing the cat­e­gories of mur­der pun­ish­able by death from 19 to four. The new law restricts the death penal­ty to cases…

Ohio can­not obtain drugs to car­ry out exe­cu­tions with­out putting pub­lic health at risk, Governor Mike DeWine (pic­tured) announced on July 31, 2019. DeWine told reporters that phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers are unwill­ing to sell the state drugs for exe­cu­tions and have threat­ened to stop sell­ing med­i­cines to any state agency if they sus­pect the drugs might be divert­ed from ther­a­peu­tic use to use in exe­cu­tions. A sales embar­go could mean that the state would not be able to obtain medicines for…

Citing tri­al court inter­fer­ence in her right to present a defense, a fed­er­al appeals court has over­turned the con­vic­tion of a Texas moth­er who was sen­tenced to death on charges that she had mur­dered her two-year-old daugh­ter. In an unpub­lished, unsigned opin­ion issued on July 29, 2019, a unan­i­mous three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said that tri­al court rul­ings that blocked Melissa Elizabeth Lucio (pic­tured) from call­ing an expert witness to…

The announce­ment by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) that it intends to resume fed­er­al exe­cu­tions after a 16-year hia­tus has sparked com­men­tary from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum and embold­ened the Arizona Attorney General to seek a resump­tion of exe­cu­tions in that state. Responses from con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dits demon­strat­ed the increas­ing bipar­ti­san skep­ti­cism towards the death penal­ty. Catholic bish­ops reassert­ed the Church’s now unequiv­o­cal oppo­si­tion to capital punishment.

A for­mer Pennsylvania death-row prison super­in­ten­dent says work­ing on death row makes cor­rec­tions personnel feel ​“less human” and ​“can be pro­found­ly dam­ag­ing” psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly. Cynthia Link (pic­tured) served as the Superintendent of Pennsylvania’s State Correctional Institution at Graterford from 2015 to 2018, dur­ing a peri­od in which the prison housed more than 20 of the Commonwealth’s death row pris­on­ers. In a July 16, 2019 op-ed for…

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has announced its intent to adopt a new fed­er­al exe­cu­tion pro­to­col using a sin­gle exe­cu­tion drug and has issued death war­rants set­ting exe­cu­tion dates for five fed­er­al death-row pris­on­ers. In a July 25, 2019 press release, the DOJ said that Attorney General William P. Barr had direct­ed the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to adopt an adden­dum to the fed­er­al exe­cu­tion pro­to­col spec­i­fy­ing that fed­er­al exe­cu­tions will be car­ried out using the drug…

The decline in the U.S. death-row pop­u­la­tion con­tin­ued for a 17^th con­sec­u­tive year in 2017, accord­ing to new­ly released find­ings by the United States Bureau of Justice Statistics. The data in the Bureau’s annu­al death-penal­­ty report, Capital Punishment, 2017: Selected Findi­­ngs, con­firm the long-term find­ings of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund show­ing that death row has fall­en in size every year since…

A divid­ed Missouri Supreme Court has upheld the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s death-penal­­ty statute against a chal­lenge to its require­ment that the tri­al judge decide a cap­i­tal defendant’s sen­tence in cas­es of a penal­­ty-phase hung jury. In a 4 – 3 deci­sion issued on July 16, 2019, the court reject­ed a claim brought by Craig Wood (pic­tured) that hung-jury judi­cial sen­tenc­ing vio­lat­ed his Sixth Amendment right to tri­al by jury. A 5 – 2 major­i­ty of the court also denied relief on Wood’s claims…

In a high­ly pub­li­cized death-penal­­ty tri­al, Brendt Christensen (pic­tured) was sen­tenced to life in prison with­out parole on July 18, 2019 for the rape and mur­der of Chinese grad­u­ate stu­dent Yingying Zhang when a fed­er­al jury in Peoria, Illinois did not reach a unan­i­mous deci­sion on what sen­tence was appro­pri­ate for his crime. The tri­al attract­ed broad nation­al and inter­na­tion­al atten­tion as a result of the sen­sa­tion­al cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the mur­der, Ms. Zhang’s sta­tus as an…

Calling Governor Gavin Newsom​’s mora­to­ri­um on executions a ​“par­a­digm shift” in the death-penal­­ty land­scape, a defen­dant fac­ing the death penal­ty in Los Angeles has peti­tioned the California Supreme Court to halt cap­i­tal pros­e­cu­tions in the state. On July 1, 2019, lawyers for Cleamon Johnson—whose death penal­ty tri­al is sched­uled to begin in January 2020 — have filed a pre­tri­al peti­tion for review, argu­ing that capital juries…