Entries by Death Penalty Information Center
News
May 07, 2018
Pressed on Execution Practices, Nebraska Obstructs Release of Information
As legislators and the media have pressed Nebraska for information on its secretive execution practices, the executive branch has responded — the state’s leading newspapers say — with obfuscation and with a lawsuit that has created a state constitutional crisis. After adopting a new execution policy that the Lincoln Journal Star reported“was written in a single draft without input from the governor, attorney general,…
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May 04, 2018
NEW PODCAST — Culture of Conviction: Brian Stolarz on How Houston Prosecutors Convicted His Innocent Client
In 2005, Alfred Dewayne Brown (pictured left) was wrongly convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of a Houston, Texas police officer based on false testimony Harris County prosecutors obtained through coercion and threats. After spending a decade on death row for a crime he did not commit, Brown was finally released with the help of his attorney Brian Stolarz (pictured right), who…
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May 03, 2018
Georgia Parole Board Grants Stay to Robert Earl Butts, Jr. to Further Consider His Clemency Request [UPDATE: STAY LIFTED]
The Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles has halted the execution of Robert Earl Butts, Jr. (pictured), less than 24 hours before the state intended to put him to death. On May 2, the Board stayed Butts’s execution for up to 90 days, saying it needed additional time“to examine the substance of the claims offered in support of the application.” In a news release accompanying the issuance of the stay, the Board said it had received a…
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May 02, 2018
EDITORIAL: California Exoneration Shows Why Death Penalty Needs to End
In an April 27 editorial, the Los Angeles Times said the death penalty should come to an end and the recent exoneration of California death-row prisoner Vicente Benavides Figueroa illustrates why. Benavides — an intellectually disabled Mexican national who was working as a seasonal farm worker — spent more than 25 years on death row after being wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death on charges of raping, sodomizing,…
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May 01, 2018
Los Angeles Times Editorial: Exoneration Shows Why Death Penalty Needs to End
The April 2018 exoneration of Vicente Benavides Figueroa, wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death on charges of raping, sodomizing, and murdering his girlfriend’s 21-month-old daughter, illustrates why the death penalty should be abolished, the Los Angeles Times said in an April 27, 2018 editorial. Benavides — an intellectually disabled Mexican national who was working as a seasonal farm worker — was sentenced to death after…
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Apr 30, 2018
Supreme Court To Review Lethal-Injection Case of Condemned Prisoner with Rare Congenital Disease
The U.S. Supreme Court has granted review in the case of Missouri death-row prisoner Russell Bucklew, who has argued that the severe form of a rare congenital disorder from which he suffers makes it unconstitutionally cruel for him to be executed by lethal injection. Bucklew has an extreme form of cavernous hemangioma, a malformation of his blood vessels that causes blood-filled tumors to grow in his head, neck, and throat. The…
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Apr 30, 2018
New Hampshire Legislature Passes Death-Penalty Repeal Bill, But More Votes Needed to Override Threatened Veto
The New Hampshire state legislature has voted to repeal the state’s death penalty, but proponents of the bill currently lack the votes necessary to overcome a threatened gubernatorial veto. On April 26, the New Hampshire House of Representatives voted 223 – 116 to pass Senate Bill 593, with 145 Democrats, 77 Republicans, and one Libertarian supporting repeal. The state senate previously approved the measure 14 – 10 on March 15, with support from eight Democrats and…
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Apr 27, 2018
From Slavery to the Death Penalty: New Museum and Memorial for Peace and Justice Open in Montgomery, Alabama
On April 26, 2018, the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) opened the Memorial for Peace and Justice and its accompanying Legacy Museum, which tell the stories of the more than 4,000 men, women, and children killed by racial terror lynchings in the century following the Civil War, and trace the connections between slavery, segregation, capital punishment, and mass incarceration. The opening drew thousands of visitors from across the country, theatrical headliners,…
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Apr 26, 2018
DPIC Study Shows 97% of Prisoners Who Overturn Pennsylvania Death Sentences Are Not Resentenced to Death
In Pennsylvania, death-row prisoners whose convictions or death sentences are overturned in state or federal post-conviction appeals are almost never resentenced to death, a new Death Penalty Information Center study has revealed. Since Pennsylvania adopted its current death-penalty statute in September 1978, post-conviction courts have reversed prisoners’ capital convictions or death sentences in 170 cases. Defendants have faced capital retrials or resentencings…
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Apr 25, 2018
Powerful New Documentaries Explore Death-Penalty Issues
Three powerful new documentaries that explore the modern death penalty in the United States are set to…
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