Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The Harris County District Clerk’s Office is attempt­ing to resolve near­ly one-hun­­­dred crim­i­nal appeals, includ­ing two death penal­ty cas­es, that were over­looked by the court sys­tem for decades. Among them are the appeals of the two death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­ers, Tony Tyrone Dixon…

The jury that found Richard Bowers guilty of all 63 fed­er­al charges he faces in con­nec­tion with the 2018 Pittsburgh syn­a­gogue shoot­ing found him eli­gi­ble for the death penal­ty on July 13, 2023. Jurors delib­er­at­ed for about two hours before find­ing that the pros­e­cu­tion had met its bur­den by prov­ing that Mr. Bowers had the nec­es­sary intent to com­mit the crime and that the crime had spe­cif­ic aggra­vat­ing fac­tors for eli­gi­bil­i­ty. These fac­tors included the…

Doug Evans, the District Attorney who tried death row exoneree Curtis Flowers for mur­der six times, is retir­ing. Mr. Flowers received four death sen­tences, but each con­vic­tion was over­turned when courts found that Evans had ille­gal­ly exclud­ed Black jurors from…

The Death Penalty Information Center main­tains an up-to-date list of sched­uled exe­cu­tions and out­comes of death war­rants issued by the states and fed­er­al gov­ern­ment. Updated each busi­ness day, the Upcoming Executions page con­tains inter­ac­tive maps dis­play­ing the cur­rent num­ber of active death war­rants, as well as the total num­ber of exe­cu­tions sched­uled for each year, through 2026. There are also tables list­ing addi­tion­al infor­ma­tion about each…

On July 5, 2023, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (pic­tured) filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in sup­port of death row pris­on­er Richard Glossip’s peti­tion for a writ of cer­tio­rari. The Innocence Project and six legal schol­ars have also filed briefs in sup­port of Mr. Glossip, while the victim’s fam­i­ly and the Oklahoma District Attorneys Association have filed a brief…

On June 29, 2023, Missouri Governor Mike Parson (pic­tured) lift­ed the stay of exe­cu­tion for Marcellus Williams, a death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er con­vict­ed of mur­der­ing Felisha Gayle, a for­mer St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter in 1998. Governor Parson also dis­solved the Board of Inquiry, a judi­cial pan­el appoint­ed by for­mer Missouri Governor Eric Greitens to review evi­dence of inno­cence and pro­vide rec­om­men­da­tions on Mr. Williams’s appli­ca­tion for executive…

A bill that Idaho Governor Brad Little signed into law in March 2023, autho­riz­ing the use of the fir­ing squad as a method of exe­cu­tion, went into effect on July 1, 2023. This law grants the direc­tor of Idaho Department of Corrections (IDOC) the author­i­ty to deter­mine if lethal injec­tion is avail­able and, if deemed unavail­able, to car­ry out the execution…

As Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards (pic­tured) con­sid­ers the clemen­cy peti­tions filed by 51 of the state’s 57 death row pris­on­ers, advo­cates and jour­nal­ists have not­ed the sim­i­lar­i­ties between Louisiana’s death penal­ty sys­tem and that of Illinois, where Governor George Ryan com­mut­ed the sen­tences of all 167 peo­ple on death row in 2003. Both states have had high num­bers of death row exon­er­a­tions stem­ming from sys­temic mis­con­duct, death sen­tences in both states…

On June 28, 2023, Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) denied Rodney Reed’s (pic­tured) appli­ca­tion for habeas relief and reject­ed Mr. Reed’s claim that pros­e­cu­tors at his 1998 tri­al ille­gal­ly pre­sent­ed false tes­ti­mo­ny and with­held excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence that could have exon­er­at­ed him. His case gained inter­na­tion­al atten­tion in 2019 when a bipar­ti­san group of law­mak­ers urged Republican Governor Abbot to stop his exe­cu­tion. Throughout his incar­cer­a­tion, he…

A forth­com­ing law review arti­cle tack­les big ques­tions about pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct. The Brady Database focus­es on the prin­ci­ple stat­ed in the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland: that the gov­ern­men­t’s with­hold­ing of evi­dence that is mate­r­i­al to the deter­mi­na­tion of either guilt or pun­ish­ment of a crim­i­nal defen­dant vio­lates the defen­dan­t’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to due process. While the arti­cle focuses on…