Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

An esti­mat­ed 1,500 gov­ern­ment offi­cials and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of non-gov­­ern­­men­­tal orga­ni­za­tions from more than 140 coun­tries gath­ered in Brussels, Belgium on February 26, 2019 for the open­ing of the Seventh World Congress Against the Death Penalty. The World Congress ­– orga­nized by the Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort and the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty – is the world’s lead­ing con­vo­ca­tion on cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. The four-day meet­ing for­mal­ly opened on February 27 with a ceremony…

Two for­mer California death-row pris­on­ers who had spent a com­bined 70 years in prison are now free men, after fed­er­al courts over­turned their con­vic­tions and local pros­e­cu­tors agreed to plea deals on non-cap­i­­tal charges. James Hardy (pic­tured, left) was freed on February 14, 2019 after plead­ing guilty to two counts of first-degree mur­der in exchange for a sus­pend­ed sen­tence and release on pro­ba­tion. Freddie Lee Taylor (pic­tured, right) was…

Responding to the Georgia state and fed­er­al courts’ refusal to reverse a death sen­tence imposed on an African-American defen­dant by a jury taint­ed by racism, an ide­o­log­i­cal­ly diverse range of voic­es have called on the U.S. Supreme Court to inter­vene. Georgia death-row pris­on­er Keith Tharpe (pic­tured) was sen­tenced to death by a juror who later said, ​“there are two types of black peo­ple: 1. Black folks and 2. N***rs,” and wondered ​“if black…

Two ami­cus curi­ae briefs filed in the Racial Justice Act appeal of North Carolina death-row pris­on­er Rayford Burke (pic­tured) are ask­ing the North Carolina Supreme Court to redress sys­temic prob­lems in North Carolina’s admin­is­tra­tion of its death penal­ty. One brief, filed by the New York-based NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF), urges the court to provide Burke ​“the oppor­tu­ni­ty to prove that racial bias impermissibly influenced…

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (pic­tured) has halt­ed all exe­cu­tions in the state until its Department of Rehabilitation and Correction is able to devel­op a new exe­cu­tion pro­to­col that gains approval from the courts. Responding to the find­ings of a fed­er­al court that likened Ohio’s three-drug lethal-injec­­tion pro­to­col to a com­bi­na­tion of water­board­ing and chem­i­cal fire, DeWine said ​“Ohio is not going to exe­cute some­one under my watch when a federal…

Overturning the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for the sec­ond time, the United States Supreme Court ruled on February 19, 2019, that Texas death-row pris­on­er Bobby James Moore is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and may not be exe­cut­ed. In an unsigned opin­ion, the Supreme Court reversed the lat­est Texas appeals court deci­sion that would have allowed Moore’s exe­cu­tion, say­ing the state court had relied on many of the same improper lay…

Bills to repeal and replace the death penal­ty with non-cap­i­­tal pun­ish­ments have gained new trac­tion across the United States in 2019 as a result of oppo­si­tion to the death penal­ty among ide­o­log­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive leg­is­la­tors. That move­ment – buoyed by fis­cal and pro-life con­ser­v­a­tives, con­ser­v­a­tive law-reform advo­cates, and the deep­en­ing involve­ment of the Catholic Church in death-penal­­ty abo­li­tion – has led to unprece­dent­ed suc­cess­es in numer­ous hous­es of state leg­is­la­tures and moved repeal…

A February 4, 2019 arti­cle in the crim­i­nal jus­tice newslet­ter, The Appeal, fea­tures the case of Demetrius Howard, a California pris­on­er sen­tenced to death for a crime in which he didn’t kill any­one. Howard was sen­tenced to death in 1995 for his par­tic­i­pa­tion in a rob­bery in which anoth­er man, Mitchell Funches, shot and killed Sherry Collins. Howard was nev­er accused of fir­ing a shot and he has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained that he nei­ther expected nor…

As exe­cu­tion drugs have become more dif­fi­cult for states to law­ful­ly obtain and prob­lem­at­ic exe­cu­tions have become more fre­quent, states have expand­ed their efforts to shield their exe­cu­­tion-relat­ed activ­i­ties from pub­lic scruti­ny. In the lat­est episode of Discussions with DPIC, Robin Konrad, for­mer DPIC Director of Research and Special Projects, joins Executive Director Robert Dunham and cur­rent Director of Research and Special Projects Ngozi Ndulue to dis­cuss DPIC​’s…

The U.S. Supreme Court has found itself in the cross­fire of harsh crit­i­cism from across the polit­i­cal spec­trum after its inter­ven­tion in a death penal­ty case allowed Alabama to exe­cute a Muslim pris­on­er with­out pro­vid­ing him access to a religious…