Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Just one week before the sched­uled exe­cu­tion of Christopher Sepulvado, Louisiana announced it has been unable to find pen­to­bar­bi­tal for its lethal injec­tions and instead may apply a new pro­ce­dure used only once before in the U.S. If the state can­not obtain pen­to­bar­bi­tal, it will employ the two-drug pro­ce­dure used by Ohio on January16 to exe­cute Dennis McGuire, an exe­cu­tion that result­ed in gasp­ing sounds and move­ments by the inmate over…

Attorneys for a Missouri inmate fac­ing immi­nent exe­cu­tion have assert­ed that the Department of Corrections has vio­lat­ed state and fed­er­al laws in acquir­ing its lethal injec­tion drugs. Herbert Smulls is sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on January 29, but a chal­lenge has been filed in fed­er­al court alleg­ing that the state’s pen­to­bar­bi­tal was obtained from a com­pound­ing phar­ma­cy in Oklahoma, which is unli­censed in Missouri. The suit also…

New Hampshire, which is con­sid­er­ing a bill to repeal the death penal­ty, only has one inmate on death row – Michael Addison, who was con­vict­ed of killing a police offi­cer. Now that offi­cer’s for­mer part­ner, John Breckenridge (pic­tured), has had a change of heart about the death penal­ty and is call­ing for an end to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. Initially, Breckenridge sup­port­ed a death sen­tence for Addison, and even spoke in favor of…

The Death Penalty Information Center’s web­site has been select­ed for inclu­sion in the archives of the U.S. Library of Congress. DPIC​’s mate­ri­als will be part of the Library’s his­toric col­lec­tion of Internet resources on pub­lic pol­i­cy top­ics, which will be made avail­able to researchers at Library of Congress facil­i­ties, and may also be avail­able on the Library’s pub­lic access web­site at a lat­er date. The Library’s Web Archiving Team said,…

Bernice King, the youngest daugh­ter of Martin Luther King, Jr., encour­aged New Hampshire to repeal the death penal­ty, say­ing that even though she lost her father and grand­moth­er to mur­der,​“I can’t accept the judg­ment that killers need to be killed, a prac­tice that mere­ly per­pet­u­ates the cycle of vio­lence.” She called the death penal­ty​“unwor­thy of a civ­i­lized soci­ety,” and warned that​“ret­ri­bu­tion can­not light the way to the…

A new poll by the Barna Group found that only 40% of prac­tic­ing Christians sup­port­ed the death penal­ty, and sup­port was even low­er among younger Christians. According to the poll released on January 17, only 23% of prac­tic­ing Christian​“mil­len­ni­als” (i.e., those born between 1980 and 2000) agreed with the state­ment:​“The gov­ern­ment should have the option to exe­cute the worst crim­i­nals.” Without regard to their reg­u­lar prac­tice of their faith, only 42% of Christian baby…

On January 16, Ohio car­ried out the first lethal injec­tion in the U.S. using a new pro­to­col, result­ing in a lengthy and dis­rup­tive exe­cu­tion. Ohio employed a back-up pro­ce­dure to exe­cute Dennis McGuire, using mida­zo­lam, a seda­tive, and hydro­mor­phone, a painkiller. Witnesses to the exe­cu­tion report­ed that McGuire snort­ed, gasped, and strug­gled dur­ing the exe­cu­tion, which took longer than usu­al for death to occur. Deborah Denno,…

In an op-ed in the Austin American-Statesman, for­mer Texas Governor Mark White called for a new hear­ing for Edgar Tamayo, a Mexican nation­al sched­uled for exe­cu­tion on January 22. Foreign nation­als charged with crimes in the U.S. are enti­tled to assis­tance from their con­sulate under the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, but Tamayo was denied that right. White joins U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and the Mexican Foreign…

The Kansas Judicial Council, an advi­so­ry body to the leg­is­la­ture, released pre­lim­i­nary find­ings on the cost of the death penal­ty in prepa­ra­tion for leg­isla­tive hear­ings on a repeal mea­sure. The coun­cil found that state Supreme Court Justices spend 20 times more hours on death penal­ty appeals than on non-cap­i­­­tal appeals; the Department of Corrections spends than twice as much ($49,380 ver­sus $24,690) to house a death-row inmate per year…

Six retired judges in North Carolina urged the the state Supreme Court to uphold the rul­ings of a low­er court that found racial bias in the use of the death peanl­ty. Former chief jus­tices James Exum and Henry Frye, along with for­mer judges Willis Whichard, Melzer Morgan, Wade Barber and Russell Walker filed a brief in sup­port of inmates whose death sen­tences were reduced to life with­out parole in 2012 under the state’s Racial Justice Act. The Act allowed death row…