Entries by Death Penalty Information Center
News
Feb 02, 2018
BOOK: Death-Row Exoneree Anthony Ray Hinton Publishes “Heart-Wrenching Yet Ultimately Hopeful” Memoir
Anthony Ray Hinton spent thirty years confined on Alabama’s death row for murders he did not commit. Three years after his exoneration and release, he has published a memoir of his life, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row, that recounts stories from his childhood, the circumstances of his arrest, the travesty of his trial, how he survived and grew on death row, and how he won his freedom.
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Feb 01, 2018
Researcher: Racial Disparities Require Abolishing or Severely Restricting Death Penalty
Severely restricting the use of capital punishment or abolishing the death penalty altogether would help rectify some of the persistent racial disparities found in the United States’ criminal justice system, according to Cassia Spohn (pictured), the Foundation Professor of Criminology and Director of the School of Criminology & Criminal Justice at Arizona State University. In a chapter on Race and Sentencing Disparity in the recently…
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Jan 31, 2018
Alabama Prosecutors Join Motion to Resentence Death-Row Prisoner With 48 IQ to Life Without Parole
Alabama prosecutors have agreed that Renard Marcel Daniel (pictured) should be resentenced to life without parole, after the state’s mental health expert administered psychological tests to Daniel that showed the intellectually disabled man had an IQ of 48. Earlier in January, Daniel’s lawyers — with the consent of the Alabama Attorney General’s office — filed a motion in federal district court jointly asking the court to vacate…
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Jan 30, 2018
Colorado Supreme Court Overturns Prison-Murder Conviction, Says Prosecutors Withheld Evidence in Death-Penalty Case
The Colorado Supreme Court has upheld a trial court ruling overturning the first-degree murder conviction of David Bueno (pictured) after Arapahoe County prosecutors who sought the death penalty against him in a prison killing hid evidence that pointed to another suspect. The January 22 ruling comes in the wake of a trial court ruling that prosecutors in the state’s 18th Judicial District, which includes Arapahoe County,…
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Jan 29, 2018
NEW VOICES: Law Enforcement Officials in Washington, Texas Call for End of Their States’ Death Penalties
Drawing on their experience in the criminal justice system, elected law enforcement officials in Washington and Texas have urged repeal of their states’ death-penalty…
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Jan 27, 2018
U.S. Supreme Court Stays Alabama Execution to Consider Vernon Madison’s Competency to Be Executed
The United States Supreme Court has stayed the execution of Vernon Madison to consider for a second time questions related to his competency…
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Jan 25, 2018
Wake County, North Carolina Jury Rejects Death Penalty in Ninth Consecutive Case
A Wake County, North Carolina jury has rejected the death penalty for 24-year-old Donovan Jevonte Richardson (pictured) and sentenced him to two life sentences, marking the ninth consecutive Wake County capital trial to result in a life verdict. No jury has imposed the death penalty in the county since 2007.“The reality,” said Gretchen Engel, Executive Director of the Durham-based Center for Death Penalty Litigation, is…
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Jan 25, 2018
Wake County, North Carolina Jury Rejects Death Penalty in Ninth Consecutive Case
A Wake County, North Carolina jury has rejected the death penalty for 24-year-old Donovan Jevonte Richardson (pictured) and sentenced him to two life sentences, marking the ninth consecutive Wake County capital trial to result in a life verdict. No jury has imposed the death penalty in the county since 2007.“The reality,” said Gretchen Engel, Executive Director of the Durham-based Center for Death Penalty Litigation, is…
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Jan 24, 2018
Florida Denies New Sentencing Hearings to More than Thirty Prisoners, Most Unconstitutionally Sentenced to Death
In three days of bulk decision-making, the Florida Supreme Court has denied new sentencing hearings to more than thirty death-row prisoners, declining to enforce its bar against non-unanimous death sentences to cases that became final on appeal before June 2002. At least 24 of the prisoners who were denied relief had been unconstitutionally sentenced to death after non-unanimous jury sentencing recommendations, including three…
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Jan 23, 2018
Condemned Alabama Prisoner Seeks Stay Based on Mental Incompetency and Arrest of Court-Appointed Expert
Lawyers for 67-year-old Vernon Madison (pictured), a death-row prisoner whose diagnosis of“irreversible and progressive” vascular dementia has left him with no memory of the crime for which he was sentenced to death, have filed a motion to stay his January 25 execution in Alabama. In a petition for writ of certiorari and motion for stay of execution filed January 18 in the U.S. Supreme Court, Madison’s lawyers argue that the courts…
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