Entries by Death Penalty Information Center
News
Apr 24, 2018
In Georgia Death-Penalty Case, Supreme Court Rebuffs Effort to Further Limit Habeas Corpus Review
In a decision most significant for what it declined to do, the U.S. Supreme Court has rebuffed efforts by state prosecutors to further limit the scope of federal habeas corpus review of state criminal cases. In a 6 – 3 vote with Justice Breyer writing for the majority, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Georgia death-row prisoner Marion Wilson (pictured), saying that he was entitled to federal-court review of the reasons why…
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Apr 23, 2018
South Dakota Takes Death Penalty Off Table At Victim’s Family’s Request
At the urging of the victim’s family, Rapid City, South Dakota prosecutors have withdrawn their request for the death penalty against two murder defendants in the only capital trials pending in the state. On April 16, Pennington County State’s Attorney Mark Vargo withdrew the state’s notice of intent to seek the death penalty against Jonathon Klinetobein—charged with arranging the May 2015…
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Apr 20, 2018
Aging of Death Row Raises Humanitarian and Practical Concerns, As Alabama Executes 83-Year Old Prisoner
Death row is aging and increasingly infirm and, as a series of recent death warrants suggest, that phenomenon is raising legal, practical, and humanitarian…
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Apr 19, 2018
Professor John Bessler Traces Italian Philosopher’s Abolitionist Legacy in New Book and Article
In 1764, Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria wrote the treatise, Dei delitti e delle pene, which author John Bessler (pictured) says spawned global movements for fair and proportional punishment and against practices such as torture and the death penalty. Beccaria’s book was a best-seller that swept across Europe and, translated into English in 1767 as An Essay on Crimes and Punishments, into the American colonies, shaping…
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Apr 18, 2018
Vicente Benavides, Sentenced to Death by False Forensics, to Be Freed After 26 Years on Death Row
Mexican national Vicente Figueroa Benavides (pictured), wrongly convicted and sentenced to death in Kern County, California for supposedly raping, sodomizing, and murdering his girlfriend’s 21-month-old daughter, will soon be freed after nearly 26 years on death row. He will be the 162nd person and fifth foreign national exonerated from a U.S. death…
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Apr 17, 2018
Sister of Murder Victim and Wife of Death-Row Exoneree Says Death Penalty Fails Victims’ Family Members
As the sister of a murder victim and the wife of a death-row exoneree, LaShawn Ajamu has a unique perspective on what victims’ families need and how they are treated as criminal cases wend their way through the legal process. And the co-chair of the Murder Victims Families Support Project at Ohioans to Stop Executions strongly believes that the death penalty fails victims’ family members. Ajamu, the wife of 150th U.S. death-row exoneree Kwame…
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Apr 16, 2018
Former Prosecutors Say Intellectually Disabled Louisiana Man Entitled to New Trial After Exculpatory Evidence Withheld
Forty-four former state and federal prosecutors and Department of Justice officials — including former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey — have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to grant a new trial to Corey Williams (pictured), saying that Caddo Parish, Louisiana prosecutors violated their duty to ensure that“justice shall be done” by withholding…
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Apr 13, 2018
Washington Supreme Court Unanimously Finds Reversible Error, But Upholds Prisoner’s Conviction and Death Sentence
A fractured Washington Supreme Court unanimously found that a death-row prisoner’s constitutional rights had been violated under circumstances that had always before required overturning a conviction and granting a new trial, but nevertheless voted to uphold his conviction and death sentence. In five opinions spanning 254 pages published on April 12, 2018, the nine justices agreed that Conner Schierman’s (pictured) rights to be…
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Apr 12, 2018
Amnesty International Report: Death Penalty Use Down Worldwide in 2017
Use of the death penalty declined worldwide in 2017, according to the Amnesty International’s annual global report on…
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Apr 11, 2018
New Mexico Supreme Court Hears Argument on Whether State May Execute Last Two Men on Its Death Row
Nine years after New Mexico prospectively abolished capital punishment, lawyers for the state’s two remaining death-row prisoners argued to the New Mexico Supreme Court that the death penalty was unconstitutionally disproportionate punishment as applied to Timothy Allen (pictured, left) and Robert Fry (pictured, right), and that they should…
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