Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The University of Virginia School of Law has created a new interactive web resource (click on map) that allows researchers and the public to visually explore death-sentencing practices in the United States from 1991 through 2017. The interactive map provides county-level data on death sentences imposed across the United States, drawing from a new database created by University of Virginia Law Professor Brandon Garrett (pictured) for his recent book, End of Its Rope: How Killing the Death…

Multiple factors — from declining murder rates to the abandonment of capital punishment by many rural counties and substantially reduced usage in outlier counties that had aggressively imposed it in the past — have collectively led to an “astonishing plunge” in death sentences over the last twenty years, according to a new study, Lethal Rejection, published in the 2017/2018 Albany Law Review. Using data on death-eligible cases from 1994, 2004, and 2014, Drake University law professor David McCord…

One month after Alabama called off its two-and-a-half hour attempted execution of Doyle Hamm, the state reached a confidential settlement agreement in which it agreed not to seek another execution date and Hamm’s attorney dismissed his client’s pending civil-rights lawsuit. In a March 27, 2018 press release, Columbia University law professor Bernard Harcourt, who has represented Hamm for 28 years, said the settlement was reached “after lengthy, fruitful discussions with the Alabama Attorney…

In his new book Surviving Execution: A Miscarriage of Justice and the Fight to End the Death Penalty, Sky News reporter Ian Woods tells the story of his relationship with condemned Oklahoma prisoner Richard Glossip, whose case gained prominence after the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to review his challenge to the state’s lethal-injection procedures. Although Glossip’s case is most frequently associated with the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Glossip v. Gross and Oklahoma’s dramatic, last-minute…

The Tennessee Supreme Court has denied a request from the state’s attorney general to schedule eight executions before the June 1, 2018 expiration date of Tennessee’s supply of one of its execution drugs. Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery had filed the request on February 14, saying that scheduling executions “after June 1, 2018 is uncertain due to the ongoing difficulty in obtaining the necessary lethal injection chemicals.” The court’s March 15, 2018 order did not explain why it…

Ohio Governor John Kasich has commuted the death sentence of 52-year-old William Montgomery (pictured) to life without the possibility of parole. Montgomery was scheduled to be executed on April 11. The one-page proclamation granting clemency (pictured right, click to enlarge) did not specify the grounds for Kasich’s action and was not accompanied by a news release or statement to the media. The order, issued March 26, stated simply, “after consideration of all relevant factors, I … have…

Americans of all ages, races, and political affiliations overwhelmingly oppose the Trump administration plan to pursue capital punishment for drug overdose deaths and believe it will have no effect on addressing the opioid public health crisis, according to a March 16 – 21, 2018 nationwide Quinnipiac University poll. By a 50-percentage-point margin (71% to 21%, with 8% saying they did not know or would not answer), Americans oppose the death penalty for persons convicted of selling drugs that…

New court filings argue that Columbus, Georgia prosecutors had a pattern and practice of systematically striking black prospective jurors because of their race, discriminatorily empanelling all- or nearly-all-white juries to try black defendants on trial for their lives in capital murder cases. In a supplemental motion seeking a new trial for Johnny Gates (pictured) — a black man sentenced to death by an all-white jury in 1977 for the rape and murder of a white woman — lawyers from the Southern…

New court filings argue that Columbus, Georgia prosecutors had a pattern and practice of systematically striking black prospective jurors because of their race, discriminatorily empanelling all- or nearly-all-white juries to try black defendants on trial for their lives in capital murder cases. In a supplemental motion seeking a new trial for Johnny Gates (pictured) — a black man sentenced to death by an all-white jury in 1977 for the rape and murder of a white woman — lawyers from the Southern…

In a decision that clarifies the showing indigent prisoners must make to obtain investigative services, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of a Texas death-row prisoner who was denied funding to challenge the death sentence imposed in his case. In Ayestas v. Davis, the Court unanimously ruled that the Texas federal courts had applied an overly restrictive legal standard in denying Carlos Ayestas (pictured) funding to investigate and develop his claim that his lawyer had provided…