Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In a lec­ture at the Widener University School of Law, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Thomas G. Saylor crit­i­cized the poor state of death penal­ty rep­re­sen­ta­tion in Pennsylvania. He offered numer­ous cas­es in which death sen­tences were over­turned because attor­neys had failed to present mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence to the jury. Quoting from a spe­cial con­cur­rence he wrote on a cap­i­tal case involv­ing inef­fec­tive assis­tance of coun­sel, he said, ​“Of great­est concern,…

The Georgia State Bar’s con­sti­tu­tion­al sym­po­sium recent­ly staged a reen­act­ment of Furman v. Georgia, the U.S. Supreme Court case that led to the tem­po­rary sus­pen­sion of the death penal­ty in 1972. Stephen Bright (pic­tured), pres­i­dent of the Southern Center for Human Rights, played the role of Anthony Amsterdam, who argued on behalf of death row inmates in two of the four cas­es that the Court decid­ed in Furman. The roles of the justices were…

In his Sidebar col­umn in the N.Y. Times, Supreme Court reporter Adam Liptak recent­ly dis­cussed the con­cerns about states deny­ing death row inmates infor­ma­tion about how they will be exe­cut­ed. Liptak high­light­ed the recent exe­cu­tion of Michael Taylor in Missouri, where the state has made the phar­ma­cy pro­vid­ing the drugs for lethal injec­tion part of its ​“exe­cu­tion team,” thus obscur­ing any fail­ings the phar­ma­cy may have. This secretive…

Attorneys rep­re­sent­ing the fam­i­ly of George Stinney, Jr., recent­ly filed a request for a posthu­mous exon­er­a­tion of Mr. Stinney, the youngest per­son exe­cut­ed in the U.S. in the 20^th…

UPDATE: Louisiana Judge Ramona Emanuel ordered Glenn Ford to be ​“uncon­di­tion­al­ly released from the cus­tody of the Louisiana Department of Corrections.” (KTAL NBC News, Mar. 11, 2014). Glenn Ford, who has spent 30 years on Louisiana​’s death row is like­ly to be freed soon, after pros­e­cu­tors filed motions to vacate his con­vic­tion and sen­tence. Prosecutors said they recently received ​“cred­i­ble evi­dence” that Ford ​“was nei­ther present at, nor a…

[UPDATE: The repeal bill passed the House 225 – 104 on March 12. On April 17, the Senate vot­ed 12 – 12 and then tabled the bill.] The New Hampshire House of Representatives has sched­uled a vote on repeal­ing the death penal­ty for March 12. The bill, HB 1170, would replace the death penal­ty with life in prison with­out parole for future offens­es. The bill over­whelm­ing­ly passed the House Criminal Justice and Public Works Committee in February by a…

Edward Montour, the defen­dant accused of killing cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer Eric Autobee (pic­tured) in a Colorado prison, agreed to plead guilty on March 6 to first degree mur­der in exchange for a sen­tence of life with­out parole. Autobee’s fam­i­ly had opposed the pros­e­cu­tion’s deci­sion to seek the death penal­ty for Montour, stand­ing in wit­ness in front of the cour­t­house dur­ing jury selec­tion, and ask­ing the judge to…

The lat­est edi­tion of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund’s Death Row, USA shows the total death row pop­u­la­tion con­tin­u­ing to decline in size. The U.S. death-row pop­u­la­tion decreased from 3,108 on April 1, 2013, to 3,095 on July 1, 2013. The new total rep­re­sent­ed a 12% decrease from 10 years ear­li­er, when the death row pop­u­la­tion was 3,517. The states with the largest death rows were California (733), Florida (412), Texas…

David Floyd, a Republican state rep­re­sen­ta­tive in Kentucky, recent­ly intro­duced a bill to repeal the state’s death penal­ty, argu­ing that the law was incom­pat­i­ble with con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues. Writing in the Louisville Courier-Journal, Floyd said his reli­gious views ini­tial­ly caused him to oppose the death penal­ty, but he made a broad­er prag­mat­ic case for repeal from a con­ser­v­a­tive per­spec­tive. He point­ed to val­ues such as respect for life, limiting…

New evi­dence in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham sug­gests Texas may have exe­cut­ed an inno­cent man in 2004. The key evi­dence pre­sent­ed against Willingham at tri­al was from an arson ​“expert,” who said the fire that killed Willingham’s chil­dren was inten­tion­al­ly set. That evi­dence has since been dis­cred­it­ed by a series of oth­er experts who con­clud­ed the evi­dence did not sup­port arson. Now attor­neys for the Innocence Project have uncovered a…