Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

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…

Citing race dis­par­i­ties, inef­fec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion by court-appoint­ed lawyers, and arbi­trary case out­comes, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to strike down the state’s death penal­ty. In a brief filed on July 15, 2019 in the con­sol­i­dat­ed appeals of Philadelphia death-row pris­on­er Jermont Cox and Northumberland County​’s Kevin Marinelli, the District…

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who described his decid­ing vote to uphold the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment in 1976 as the one court vote he most regret­ted, has died. He was 99 years old. A media advi­so­ry released by the Supreme Court on July 16, 2019, said that Stevens died of com­pli­ca­tions from a stroke he suf­fered the day before. ​“He brought to our bench an inim­itable blend of kind­ness, humil­i­ty, wis­dom, and inde­pen­dence,” Chief Justice John…

Amidst an ongo­ing law­suit chal­leng­ing the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of South Carolina​’s death-row con­di­tions, the state has moved its death-row pris­on­ers to a dif­fer­ent prison. On July 11, 2019, the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDOC) moved the state’s 38 death-row pris­on­ers from Kirkland Correctional Institution to the near­by Broad River Correctional Institution (pic­tured), into a facil­i­ty that had orig­i­nal­ly been built to house death-row pris­on­ers in 1988. In a press…

Rick Unklesbay served as a pros­e­cu­tor in the Pima County Attorney’s Office in Arizona for near­ly four decades, pros­e­cut­ing more than 100 homi­cides, includ­ing six­teen in which death sen­tences were imposed. He put Don Miller on death row and, in November 2000, watched as Arizona put Miller to death. In Arbitrary Death: A Prosecutor’s Perspective on the Death Penalty, Unklesbay tells…

In the span of two weeks, juries in four unre­lat­ed cas­es in which Florida pros­e­cu­tors had sought the death penal­ty have instead returned life sen­tences. The cas­es — which were con­sid­ered prob­a­ble death ver­dicts if judges were per­mit­ted to impose sen­tence — illus­trate the impact of the changes in Florida law in 2016 and 2017 ban­ning judi­cial death sen­tences based on non-unan­i­­mous jury rec­om­men­da­tions for death. Between June 27, 2019 and July 11, 2019, jurors in the cases of…

The American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section will soon release its annu­al report on issues, trends, and sig­nif­i­cant changes in America’s crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. The new pub­li­ca­tion, The State of Criminal Justice 2019, includes a chap­ter by Ronald J. Tabak, chair of the Death Penalty Committee of the ABA​’s Section of Civil Rights and Social Justice, describ­ing sig­nif­i­cant death penal­ty cas­es and capital punishment…

The num­ber of peo­ple on death row or fac­ing cap­i­tal resen­tenc­ing in the United States has con­tin­ued its 19-year decline, accord­ing to a new death-row cen­sus by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). The Spring 2019 edi­tion of Death Row USA, released in ear­ly July, reports that 2,673 peo­ple in 32 states or in U.S. fed­er­al or mil­i­tary cus­tody were on death rows across the U.S. as of April 1, 2019. That total reflects a 2.6% drop from the same time in 2018…

A Texas coun­ty court has set an exe­cu­tion date for a Jewish death-row pris­on­er despite his pend­ing fed­er­al appeal alleg­ing that the judge who presided over his tri­al and sen­tenc­ing should have been removed from the case because of his big­ot­ed racist and anti-Semitic views. On July 3, 2019, Dallas County Judge Lela Mays set an October 10 exe­cu­tion date for Randy Halprin, while he is active­ly lit­i­gat­ing a claim that for­mer Judge Vickers Cunningham repeat­ed­ly referred to Halprin…