Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Forty-two years after he and his nephew were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed of mur­der in Florida and he was sen­tenced to death, Clifford Williams, Jr. (pic­tured) has been exon­er­at­ed. Submitting a report from its Conviction Integrity Unit that found ​“no cred­i­ble evi­dence of guilt and … cred­i­ble evi­dence of inno­cence,” Duval County pros­e­cu­tors asked a Jacksonville tri­al court to dis­miss all charges against Williams, now 76 years old, and his nephew,…

Judges in Idaho and Nebraska have ordered prison offi­cials to release exe­cu­­tion-relat­ed records the states had sought to keep secret. Finding that the Idaho Department of Correction (IDOC) act­ed friv­o­lous­ly and in bad faith in its pri­or response to a pub­lic records request, a state court judge ruled on March 21 that offi­cials at IDOC must release doc­u­ments relat­ed to the state’s death-penal­­ty and exe­cu­tion process­es. In Nebraska, a fed­er­al district court…

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles denied clemen­cy for Patrick Murphy (pic­tured) on March 27, 2019, mov­ing the state one step clos­er to exe­cut­ing him on March 28 for a mur­der he nei­ther com­mit­ted nor intend­ed to com­mit nor was present when it…

For decades, stud­ies have shown per­sis­tent racial dis­par­i­ties in the admin­is­tra­tion of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Saying ​“death sen­tences are uneven­ly and unfair­ly applied based on race,” California Governor Gavin Newsom on March 13, 2019 imposed a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the state with the nation’s largest death row. Responding to the governor’s mora­to­ri­um In an op-ed for the Los Angeles Times, Stanford psychology professor…

Broward County, Florida pros­e­cu­tors moved to posthu­mous­ly exon­er­ate Ronald Stewart (pic­tured) of a rape and mur­der he did not com­mit. Stewart pled no con­test to the 1983 rape and mur­der of Regina Harrison after he was threat­ened with the death penal­ty. The actu­al killer, whose guilt has since been con­firmed by DNA test­ing, went on to mur­der at least two more women after…

Rocky Myers (pic­tured) may be inno­cent and intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled. His jury did not think he should be sen­tenced to die. Alabama intends to exe­cute him any­way. Myers’ case is rife with legal issues, but he received no fed­er­al court review because his appel­late lawyer aban­doned him with­out notice, let­ting the fil­ing dead­line for chal­leng­ing Myers’ con­vic­tion and death sen­tence expire. In a recent fea­ture sto­ry in The Nation, reporter Ashoka Mukpo tells the sto­ry of how the…

The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to grant a new tri­al to Curtis Flowers (pic­tured), an African-American death-row pris­on­er tried six times for the same mur­ders by a white Mississippi pros­e­cu­tor who struck near­ly every black juror from ser­vice in each of the tri­als. During oral argu­ment in Flowers v. Mississippi on March 20, 2019, eight jus­tices expressed con­cern that Flowers had been denied a fair tri­al as a…

In a vic­to­ry for the media and advo­cates of open gov­ern­ment, a unan­i­mous three-judge pan­el of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit ruled on March 18, 2019 that Alabama must dis­close key por­tions of its high­ly secre­tive lethal-injec­­tion exe­cu­tion pro­to­col to the pub­lic. The Associated Press, the Montgomery Advertiser, and Alabama Media Group had sued for access to the pro­to­col, which came under intense scruti­ny in the wake of Alabama’s failed attempt to execute…

For the sec­ond time in just over one month, the United States Supreme Court has cleared the way for the exe­cu­tion of an African-American pris­on­er in the face of strong evi­dence of racial or reli­gious bias. On March 18, 2019, the Court unan­i­mous­ly declined to hear an appeal from Georgia death-row pris­on­er Keith Tharpe (pic­tured), who argued his death sen­tence was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly taint­ed by the par­tic­i­pa­tion of racist white juror who called…

Beth Kissileff (pic­tured), a writer and the wife of a rab­bi who sur­vived the shoot­ing ram­page that killed eleven wor­ship­pers at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life syn­a­gogue, has asked the U.S. Department of Justice not to seek the death penal­ty against the man charged with com­mit­ting those mur­ders. In an opin­ion arti­cle for the Religion News Service, Kissileff wrote that she and her hus­band, Rabbi Jonathan Perlman of Pittsburgh’s New Light Congregation, engaged fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors and a social worker…