Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Death row is aging and increas­ing­ly infirm and, as a series of recent death war­rants sug­gest, that phe­nom­e­non is rais­ing legal, prac­ti­cal, and humanitarian…

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…

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 162^nd per­son and fifth for­eign nation­al exon­er­at­ed from a U.S. death…

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 150^th U.S. death-row exoneree Kwame…

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…

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…

Use of the death penal­ty declined world­wide in 2017, accord­ing to the Amnesty International’s annu­al glob­al report on…

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…

Twenty-two years after Walter Ogrod (pic­tured) was sen­tenced to death for a mur­der he insists he did not com­mit, a new Philadelphia District Attorney’s admin­is­tra­tion has dropped the office’s long-time oppo­si­tion to Ogrod’s request for DNA test­ing and has referred the case for review by a revi­tal­ized Conviction Integrity…

Less than three months after the U.S. Supreme Court direct­ed a fed­er­al appeals court to recon­sid­er whether Georgia death-row pris­on­er Keith Tharpe (pic­tured) is enti­tled to fed­er­al-court review of his claim that he was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly sen­tenced to death because he is Black, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has declined to review Tharpe’s appeal, say­ing he had nev­er pre­sent­ed the issue…