Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Gaile Owens is cur­rent­ly on death row in Tennessee and await­ing a deci­sion from the Tennessee Supreme Court on a request to reduce her sen­tence to life. Owens’s attor­neys have asked the state’s high court to remove the death penal­ty because her case presents unique cir­cum­stances that war­rant the rare move. Owens may face exe­cu­tion soon for solic­it­ing the 1985 mur­der of her hus­band, Ronald Owens, a man she said repeat­ed­ly abused her. Sidney…

On February 24, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals over­turned the death sen­tence of Charles Dean Hood because the jury was improp­er­ly instruct­ed about poten­tial­ly mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence at his tri­al. Hood’s case more recent­ly made nation­al news when a pri­or extra­mar­i­tal affair between the tri­al judge and the pros­e­cu­tor was revealed. In 2008, even after the judge and the pros­e­cu­tor admit­ted to their inti­mate rela­tion­ship, the Court…

On February 22, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear, and then sum­mar­i­ly reversed, a fed­er­al appeals court deci­sion that would have giv­en a Texas defen­dant a new tri­al based on improp­er jury selec­tion. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit had ruled that Anthony Haynes should be retried or released because a prospec­tive juror was improp­er­ly exclud­ed based on the juror’s race. Two dif­fer­ent judges had presided over the jury…

A bill that would have end­ed the death penal­ty in Kansas lost by a tie vote of 20 – 20 in the state Senate on February 19. The bill would have replaced the death penal­ty with a sen­tence of life with­out parole. Republican Senator Carolyn McGinn, the orig­i­nal spon­sor of the leg­is­la­tion, argued for repeal, point­ing to the high cost of the death penal­ty:​“It costs half a mil­lion dol­lars, or 70 per­cent more, to try a death…

Amicus, an orga­ni­za­tion based in the United Kingdom that assists in the legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of those await­ing cap­i­tal tri­als in the United States, will be host­ing a mock tri­al at the Emmanuel Centre (pic­tured) in Westminster, London on Tuesday, March 2, begin­ning at 6:30 PM. The ques­tion is whether the death penal­ty in the U.S. per­verts the course of jus­tice. The tri­al will be presided over by Lord Woolf, Geoffrey Robertson, QC, and Sir…

Messages of Life from Death Row fea­tures cor­re­spon­dence from Texas death row inmate Roger McGowen to soci­ol­o­gist and writer Pierre Pradervand. McGowen’s let­ters describe his life on death row and point to flaws in the American crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem, espe­cial­ly the arbi­trary nature of the death penal­ty. The pub­lish­er, BookSurge, said the book offers a​“unique jux­ta­po­si­tion of care­ful­ly select­ed texts next…