Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The Arkansas Supreme Court has ruled that the state’s Freedom of Information Act requires the Arkansas Department of Correction (ADC) to release copies of the phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal drug and pack­ag­ing labels for the sup­ply of the drug mida­zo­lam that it intends to use in upcom­ing exe­cu­tions, but that the secre­cy pro­vi­sions of the state’s Methods of Execution Act per­mit the depart­ment to redact the batch and lot num­bers that appear…

In a Houston death-penal­­­ty case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court and result­ed in a deci­sion over­turn­ing the Texas courts’ stan­dard for deter­min­ing Intellectual Disability in cap­i­tal cas­es, pros­e­cu­tors have con­ced­ed that Bobby James Moore (pic­tured) is him­self intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and inel­i­gi­ble for the death penal­ty. In a brief filed November 1 in the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, Harris County…

Finding that an Alabama pros­e­cu­tor with a his­to­ry of mis­con­duct had​“inten­tion­al­ly” made improp­er com­ments in the cap­i­tal tri­al of Artez Hammonds (pic­tured)​“in fla­grant vio­la­tion” of a pre-tri­al order warn­ing him not to do so, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit nev­er­the­less denied Hammonds’s appeal and per­mit­ted his con­vic­tion and death sen­tence to stand. While the court not­ed that the pros­e­cu­tor, District…

Appeals courts in Mississippi and Pennsylvania have grant­ed new tri­als to two men who have long assert­ed their inno­cence of charges that had sent them to their…

A new study of more than two decades of mur­ders in Oklahoma has found that defen­dants charged with killing a white woman have odds of being sen­tenced to death in the Sooner State that are near­ly ten times greater than if they had been charged with killing a man who is a racial…

“The death penal­ty is dying in the United States, and Republicans are con­tribut­ing to its demise,” con­cludes a new report, The Right Way, released on October 25 by the advo­ca­cy group Conservatives Concerned About the Death…

“Americans’ sup­port for the death penal­ty has dipped to a lev­el not seen in 45 years,” accord­ing to the results of the 2017 Gallup poll released on October 26. Gallup report­ed that, in a nation­wide sur­vey of 1,028 adults polled October 5 – 11, 2017, 55% of Americans said they are​“in favor of the death penal­ty for a per­son con­vict­ed of mur­der,” down from a report­ed 60% in October 2016. The five per­­­cen­t­age-point decline rep­re­sent­ed an 8% decrease in the…

A fed­er­al judge has void­ed a con­tract that had pro­vid­ed Orlando-based attor­ney Patrick Megaro hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars of com­pen­sa­tion at the expense of Henry McCollum (pic­tured left, with his broth­er Leon Brown), an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled for­mer death-row pris­on­er who was exon­er­at­ed in 2014 after DNA test­ing by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission showed that he had not com­mit­ted the bru­tal rape and murder…

Two recent appel­late deci­sions by the Texas courts have thrust into the nation­al spot­light the con­tin­u­ing con­tro­ver­sy over the use of false or flawed foren­sic tes­ti­mo­ny to secure con­vic­tions in death…

The long-term decline in exe­cu­tions in the United States will con­tin­ue in 2017, accord­ing to an analy­sis of exe­cu­tion data by the Death Penalty Information Center. Although the num­ber of exe­cu­tions in the United States in 2017 will sur­pass the 20 exe­cu­tions car­ried out last year — which had been a 25-year low — the data reflects that long-term, mid-term, and short-term exe­cu­tion trends in the United States will…