Entries by Death Penalty Information Center
News
Mar 11, 2019
Two Legislatures, Two Divergent Approaches to Execution Transparency
After controversial executions raised questions of government competence or misconduct, legislatures in two states have responded with bills taking sharply different approaches to the questions of government accountability and…
Read MoreNews
Mar 08, 2019
Veto-Proof Majority of New Hampshire House Votes to Repeal State’s Death Penalty
By an overwhelming 279 – 88 margin, a veto-proof majority of the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted on March 7, 2019 to repeal the state’s death penalty. Demonstrating strong bipartisan support that garnered the backing of 56 more legislators than an identical repeal bill received in April 2018, the vote ended speculation as to how the reconstituted chamber would respond to repeal. 93 of the 400 representatives in the state house who…
Read MoreNews
Mar 07, 2019
Study Reports More Than Three-Fold Drop in Pursuit of Death Penalty by Pennsylvania Prosecutors
A new study of fourteen years of Pennsylvania murder convictions has documented a sharp decline in county prosecutors’ use of capital punishment across the Commonwealth. After examining the court files of 4,184 murder convictions from 2004 to 2017, the Allentown Morning Call found that Pennsylvania prosecutors sought the death penalty at more than triple the rate (3.3) at the start of the study period than they did fourteen years…
Read MoreNews
Mar 06, 2019
Wake County, North Carolina Imposes First Death Sentence in More Than a Decade
For the first time in more than a decade, a jury in Wake County, North Carolina has sentenced a defendant to death. On March 4, 2019, a capital sentencing jury voted to impose the death penalty upon Seaga Edward Gillard, convicted of the double murder of a pregnant prostitute and her boyfriend, who was assisting her in her business. It was the county’s tenth death-penalty trial since 2008, but juries had rejected a death sentence in each…
Read MoreNews
Mar 05, 2019
Alabama Prisoner Seeks U.S. Supreme Court Review of Attorney Conflict of Interest Case
Whose interests does a lawyer represent, the capital defendant whose life is at stake or the abusive father paying for his defense? Alabama death-row prisoner Nicholas Acklin (pictured) is seeking U.S. Supreme Court review of that issue because he alleges that the lawyer who represented him at trial had a financial conflict of interest that affected the way he represented Acklin in the penalty phase of his capital trial. Nick…
Read MoreNews
Mar 04, 2019
Alfred Dewayne Brown Declared Actually Innocent
Death-row exoneree Alfred Dewayne Brown (pictured) was declared“actually innocent” by Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg on March 1, 2019, making Brown eligible for state compensation for the time he spent wrongfully imprisoned on Texas’ death row.“My obligation as an advocate is not to tell people what they want to hear but to tell them the truth,” Ogg said at a press conference.“Alfred Brown was wrongfully convicted through…
Read MoreNews
Mar 01, 2019
Supreme Court Decides that Executing a Person With Dementia Could Be Unconstitutional
The United States Supreme Court has reversed a decision of the Alabama state courts that would have permitted the execution of Vernon Madison (pictured), a death-row prisoner whose severe dementia has left him with no memory of the crime for which he was sentenced to death and compromised his understanding of why he was to be…
Read MoreNews
Feb 28, 2019
Texas Plans to Execute Prisoner Whose Death Sentence Was Influenced by False and Unreliable Testimony
Texas is scheduled to execute Billie Wayne Coble (pictured) on February 28, 2019, despite court findings that two expert witnesses who testified for the prosecution gave“problematic” and“fabricated” testimony at his trial. Coble was sentenced to death in 1990 and resentenced in 2008 after his original sentence was overturned as a result of constitutionally deficient jury instructions. At his resentencing, the issue of…
Read MoreNews
Feb 27, 2019
7th World Congress Against Death Penalty Opens in Brussels, Belgium
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…
Read MoreNews
Feb 26, 2019
After More Than Three Decades, Two Death-Row Prisoners Freed in California
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…
Read More