Entries by Death Penalty Information Center
News
May 21, 2018
Texas Legislators Ask Why Intellectually Disabled Bobby James Moore is Still on Death Row
In March 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had employed an unscientific and unconstitutionally harsh standard in rejecting Bobby James Moore’s claim that he is ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual disability. Despite a subsequent concession by Harris County prosecutors in November 2017 that Moore (pictured) qualifies as…
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May 18, 2018
New York Times Columnist Says Kevin Cooper May Have Been Framed, Urges DNA Testing That Could Prove His Innocence
Citing extensive evidence that California death-row prisoner Kevin Cooper (pictured) may have been framed, New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Nicholas Kristof has urged Governor Jerry Brown to permit advanced DNA testing of evidence that could potentially prove Cooper’s innocence. In a column electronically posted by the Times on May 17, 2018 and scheduled to appear in the paper’s May 20…
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May 17, 2018
Texas Executes Juan Castillo Without a Hearing on His Claims of Innocence and Ineffective Representation
Texas executed Juan Castillo (pictured) on May 16, 2018, after its state courts stayed his execution to address whether his conviction and death sentence for a botched robbery and murder had been a product of false testimony, but then denied him an evidentiary hearing necessary to…
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May 16, 2018
Prosecutors Withdraw Death Penalty, Agree to Guilty Pleas in Two High Profile Cases With Multiple Victims
State and federal prosecutors have agreed to withdraw the death penalty in exchange for guilty pleas by defendants charged with multiple killings in two unrelated high-profile murder cases. On May 4, Lake County, Indiana prosecutors dropped the death penalty against Darren Vann (pictured, left), who had killed seven women. On May 1, federal prosecutors announced they would not pursue the death penalty against…
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May 15, 2018
Illinois Governor Uses Gun-Control Veto to Attempt to Re-Enact Death Penalty
lllinois Governor Bruce Rauner has conditionally vetoed a gun-control initiative unless the legislature agrees to reinstate capital punishment in the state. Exercising an amendatory veto — a power some governors are granted that permits them to amend legislation in lieu of an outright veto — Rauner called for making the killing of a police officer or any murder in which more than one person was killed a new crime of“death penalty murder.” In…
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May 14, 2018
Supreme Court Sides With Death-Row Prisoner Whose Trial Lawyer Told Jury He Was Guilty
The United States Supreme Court has granted a new trial to Louisiana death-row prisoner Robert McCoy (pictured), whose lawyer admitted his guilt despite McCoy’s“adament” and“vociferous” insistence that he was innocent. Facing what counsel believed was overwhelming evidence of guilt and hoping to persuade the jury to spare McCoy’s life, defense lawyer Larry English told jurors his client had“committed three murders.……
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May 11, 2018
STUDIES: Death-Penalty Jury Selection “Whitewashes” Juries and is Biased Towards Death
As support for the death penalty has declined in America, the process of“death-qualification” — which screens potential jurors in death-penalty cases based upon their views about capital punishment — produces increasingly unrepresentative juries from which African Americans are disproportionately excluded and, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, increasingly biases juries in favor of conviction and…
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May 10, 2018
Voters in Durham, North Carolina Expand Reach of National Reform Movement, Elect Anti-Death Penalty Prosecutor
Voters in North Carolina added their voices to an expanding movement for local criminal justice reform, ousting sheriffs who closely cooperated with federal authorities seeking to detain and deport immigrants and nominating reform candidates in local district…
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May 09, 2018
Texas Judge Finds Prosecutors Lied That Victim’s Family Supported Death Penalty, Recommends Resentencing to Life
Finding that prosecutors withheld evidence that the family of murder victim Jonas Cherry opposed the death penalty for his accused killer and then lied to jurors that Cherry’s family supported the death penalty, a trial judge in Tarrant County, Texas has recommended overturning the death sentence imposed on Paul David Storey (pictured) and replacing it with a sentence of life…
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May 08, 2018
NEW RESOURCES: BJS Releases “Capital Punishment, 2016”
The nation’s death rows continue to shrink more rapidly than new defendants are being sentenced to death, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) statistical brief,“Capital Punishment, 2016,” released April 30, 2018. (Click image to enlarge.) The statistical brief, which analyzes information on those under sentence of death in the United States as of December 31, 2016, contains official government figures documenting continuing…
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