Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Two former Pennsylvania death-row prisoners, whose death sentences were overturned by federal courts after the United States Supreme Court had ruled against them, have been resentenced to life without parole. On February 28, 2018, Scott Blystone (pictured) was resentenced to life by the Fayette County Court of Common Pleas in southwestern Pennsylvania, 34 years after being sentenced to death and 27 years after the U.S. Supreme Court heard his case. Two days later, on March 2, Joseph Kindler…

According to newly disclosed records, the Harris County assistant district attorney who prosecuted Texas death-row exoneree Alfred DeWayne Brown was aware of phone records that corroborated Brown’s assertion of innocence long before the case went to trial, but withheld the records from the defense and intimidated a witness who original testimony was supported by the records into falsely testifying against Brown. Brown was convicted and sentenced to death in 2005 for the murders of a Houston…

Alva Campbell (pictured), the terminally ill death-row prisoner who survived a botched execution attempt by the state of Ohio on November 15, 2017, has died. Campbell, 69, was afflicted with lung cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, respiratory failure, prostate cancer, and severe pneumonia; he relied on a colostomy bag, needed oxygen treatments four times a day, and required a walker for even limited mobility. He was found unresponsive in his cell at Chillicothe Correctional…

The North Carolina Supreme Court announced on March 2 that it will hear appeals from three of the four prisoners whose death sentences were reduced to life without parole under the state’s Racial Justice Act, then reinstated after the legislature repealed the law. Passed in 2009 and repealed in 2013, the landmark legislation allowed death-row prisoners to challenge their sentences on the basis of statistical evidence of racial discrimination. Marcus Robinson (pictured), Quintel Augustine…

Recently released poll results from two Florida counties that have heavily used the death penalty suggest that voters actually prefer life-sentencing options instead. Polls conducted by North Carolina-based Public Policy Polling on January 22 – 23, 2018, indicate that three-quarters of Miami-Dade County respondents preferred some form of life imprisonment rather than the death penalty as the punishment for people convicted of murder, and two-thirds of Pinellas County respondents preferred one of…

In what lawyers for Virginia death-row prisoners have called “a landmark ruling,” a federal judge has issued an injunction barring the Commonwealth from subjecting prisoners who have been sentenced to death to automatic solitary confinement, physical isolation from visitors and other prisoners, and other harsh conditions. In a decision issued on February 21, Judge Leonie M. Brinkema wrote that the conditions to which Virginia subjected death-row prisoners before instituting reforms in 2015…

With 24 prisoners currently condemned to die, Hamilton County — home to Cincinnati — has the largest death row of any county in Ohio, despite a smaller population and a lower murder rate than other parts of the state. Ten of the 55 prisoners executed in the state since the 1970s were sentenced to death in Hamilton County, again more than any other Ohio county. In a recent pair of articles in The Cincinnati Enquirer, reporter Dan Horn describes the county’s long history with the death penalty and…

Prosecutors in Mohave County, Arizona announced in February that they will drop the pursuit of the death penalty in two murder cases in the county. Justin Rector and Darrell Ketchner were separately charged with first-degree murder, and officials said their defense teams had already spent over $2.2 million preparing for trials that are still far from taking place. Mohave County Attorney Matt Smith said, “Everybody’s looking to save money and these death penalty cases are extremely expensive.”

Less than a week after Alabama halted the failed execution of a terminally ill prisoner whose veins were not suitable for intraveneous injection, the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to hear the case of another Alabama prisoner whose medical condition, his lawyers say, make him constitutionally unfit for execution. Strokes have slurred Vernon Madison’s speech and left him legally blind, incontinent, unable to walk independently, and with no memory of the offense for which he was sentenced to…

Three states — Alabama, Florida, and Texas — prepared to carry out controversial executions on Thursday, February 22, all scheduled for 7 PM Eastern time, but by the end of the night, two had been halted. Less than an hour before his scheduled execution, and after having said a final good-bye to his anguished father, Texas death-row prisoner Thomas “Bart” Whitaker (pictured, left) learned that Governor Greg Abbott had commuted his death sentence to life in prison. Minutes later, Florida executed…