Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Arguing that a brain-dam­aged woman fac­ing the death penal­ty for the starv­ing death of her young daughter ​“was inca­pable of rep­re­sent­ing her­self,” lawyers from the Georgia Office of the Capital Defender have asked that they be reap­point­ed as her coun­sel if the case advances to the penal­­ty-phase of her tri­al for life or…

In an action con­demned by the United Nations and human rights groups as a fla­grant vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law, Saudi Arabia behead­ed 37 peo­ple, includ­ing juve­nile offend­ers, in six sep­a­rate loca­tions on April 23, 2019. It was the nation’s largest mass exe­cu­tion since January 2016. Most of the peo­ple exe­cut­ed were mem­bers of the Shi’a Muslim minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ty. The human rights advo­cates blast­ed Saudi offi­cials for tar­get­ing polit­i­cal­ly dis­fa­vored groups and disregarding…

Texas has exe­cut­ed John William King (pic­tured), one of three men con­vict­ed of the bru­tal lynch­ing of James Byrd, Jr., after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to inter­vene in his case. King’s lawyers had asked the Court to grant a stay of his sched­uled April 24, 2019 exe­cu­tion after a divid­ed Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vot­ed 5 – 4 on April 22 to per­mit the exe­cu­tion to pro­ceed. King, an avowed white suprema­cist, had main­tained since the time…

At least five peo­ple were exon­er­at­ed in 2018 after hav­ing been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed in cas­es that involved the mis­use or threat­ened use of the death penal­ty, a DPIC analy­sis of data accom­pa­ny­ing a new report by the National Registry of Exonerations has shown. The National Registry’s annu­al report on wrong­ful con­vic­tions, Exonerations in 2018, record­ed a record 151 new exon­er­a­tions across the United States in 2018, includ­ing 68 exon­er­a­tions result­ing from wrongful homicide…

The Fresno County District Attorney’s office has announced that it is drop­ping the death penal­ty against Douglas Stankewitz (pic­tured), California’s longest-serv­ing death-row pris­on­er. After review­ing exten­sive mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence that Stankewitz’s tri­al coun­sel had failed to inves­ti­gate, Fresno pros­e­cu­tors announced on April 19, 2019 that a sen­tence of life with­out parole would be ​“fair and just” in Stankewitz’s case and that they will not…

Three south­ern states have tak­en action to lim­it the public’s access to infor­ma­tion relat­ing to exe­cu­tions by increas­ing secre­cy sur­round­ing lethal-injec­­tion drug sup­pli­ers. On April 12, 2019, the Texas Supreme Court reversed an ear­li­er deci­sion that would have dis­closed the source of lethal-injec­­tion drugs used to car­ry out exe­cu­tions in Texas in 2014, assert­ing that disclosure ​“would cre­ate a sub­stan­tial threat of phys­i­cal harm to the source’s employ­ees and oth­ers.” On…

A sec­ond Muslim death-row pris­on­er has filed a fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit chal­leng­ing Alabama​’s pol­i­cy of allow­ing only a Protestant Christian chap­lain in the exe­cu­tion cham­ber. Charles Burton, Jr. (pic­tured), con­vert­ed to Islam 47 years ago. In a com­plaint filed in the United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, Burton, who was sen­tenced to death in 1992, argues that Alabama’s pol­i­cy vio­lates the Establishment and Free Exercise Clauses…

A civil­ian fed­er­al appeals court has dealt anoth­er blow to the Guantánamo mil­i­tary com­mis­sion death-penal­­ty pro­ceed­ings, strik­ing more than two years of deci­sions in the USS Cole bomb­ing pros­e­cu­tion of Abd Al-Rahim Hussein Muhammed Al-Nashiri because of a mil­i­tary judge’s undis­closed con­flict of inter­est. Al-Nashiri faces cap­i­tal charges for his alleged role in the sui­cide bomb­ing attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000 in which 17 U.S. Navy sailors were killed and…

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the case of a South Dakota death-row pris­on­er whose jurors made anti-gay state­ments and relied on homo­pho­bic beliefs in decid­ing to sen­tence him to death. On April 15, 2019, the Court with­out com­ment denied a peti­tion filed by Charles Rhines (pic­tured) ask­ing the Court to declare that the con­sti­tu­tion­al right to an impar­tial jury applies equal­ly to bias against a defendant’s sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. In…

In a con­tentious rul­ing issued in the ear­ly morn­ing hours of April 12, 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court vacat­ed a stay of exe­cu­tion issued by low­er fed­er­al courts and cleared the way for Alabama to exe­cute Christopher Price (pic­tured). The Court’s 5 – 4 deci­sion, issued after 2:00 a.m. Eastern time, came after Alabama had post­poned Price’s exe­cu­tion min­utes before the mid­night Central time expi­ra­tion of his death war­rant, with the low­er court stay…