Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

UPDATE: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit stayed Madison’s execution, ordering oral argument on his competency claim. Previously: Alabama is preparing to execute Vernon Madison (pictured) on May 12, as his lawyers continue to press their claim that the 65-year-old prisoner is incompetent to be executed. Defense lawyers say Madison, whom a trial judge sentenced to death despite the jury’s recommendation of a life sentence, suffers from mental illness and has additional…

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch (pictured) ruled on May 9 that Florida’s new death sentencing law violates the state’s constitution. Ruling in the case of Karon Gaiter, who is awaiting a capital trial, Judge Hirsch said new law’s requirement that at least 10 jurors agree to the death penalty before a defendant can be sentenced to death violated Florida’s constitutional requirement that all jury verdicts must be unanimous. ​“For the ultimate decisions made within the judicial branch of…

Just 27% of Houston-area residents prefer the death penalty over life sentences for those convicted of first-degree murder, according to a new report by the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University. Harris County, the largest county in the Houston metropolitan area, ​“earned its reputation as the ​‘death penalty capital of America,’” the report says, ​“having executed more people since 1976 … than any other county in the nation.” At its peak, Harris County sentenced 44 people to…

Thirty years after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1986 decision in Batson v. Kentucky prohibited the intentional exclusion of prospective jurors on the basis of race, discrimination in capital jury selection continues to plague the administration of the death penalty across the country. In articles for The Huffington Post and Slate, Angel S. Harris, assistant counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Robert Smith, a senior fellow at Harvard Law School’s Charles Hamilton Houston…

On May 5, the Florida Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the case of Timothy Hurst, whose death sentence was overturned in the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Hurst v. Florida. The state court must determine whether the high court’s ruling, which struck down Florida’s sentencing scheme, entitles Hurst to a new sentencing hearing, reduces his sentence to life without parole, or requires some other outcome. The case may also decide how the Hurst ruling will affect the nearly 400 people on…

This week, two decades-old cases involving men with innocence claims reached final resolution: Louisiana inmate Gary Tyler (pictured) was released after 42 years in prison and Paul Gatling was exonerated in New York more than 50 years after his wrongful conviction. Both men had once faced the death penalty. Tyler was convicted and sentenced to death for the fatal shooting of a 13-year-old white boy in 1974 during a riot over school integration. A white mob had attacked a bus filled with black…

The U.S. Supreme Court has vacated a decision of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals upholding a death sentence imposed on Alabama death row prisoner Bart Johnson, and has directed the state court to reconsider the constitutionality of Alabama’s death-sentencing procedures. Johnson, represented by lawyers from the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), had challenged the constitutionality of his death sentence, which was imposed by a trial judge after a nonunanimous jury vote of 10 – 2 recommending a…

A Florida trial judge in St. Lucie County sentenced Eriese Tisdale to death on April 29 for the killing of a sheriff’s sergeant, relying on sentencing procedures from the version of Florida’s death penalty law that the U.S. Supreme Court declared unconstitutional in Hurst v. Florida. The jury in Tisdale’s case considered the evidence in the penalty phase of Tisdale’s trial under the old Florida law, voting 9 – 3 to recommend a death sentence without specifying the aggravating factors that would…

On April 24, just days before a Texas federal appeals courts was to hear his case, Max Soffar — who spent 35 years on death row constantly maintaining his innocence — died of liver cancer at the age of 60. No physical evidence linked Soffar to the crime for which he was sentenced to death, and Soffar — a seventh-grade drop-out with brain damage from fetal alcohol syndrome — said that he confessed to police only after hours of coercive questioning. In a 2014 interview, Soffar said, ​“Everything…

More than 80% of the 241 death sentences imposed in Louisiana since 1976 have been reversed on appeal, and one death row prisoner has been exonerated for every three executions in the state, according to a new study by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Professor Frank Baumgartner and statistician Tim Lyman. The study, to be published in the Southern University Law Center’s Journal of Race, Gender and Poverty, also reveals dramatic racial disparities in both the trial and appellate stages…