Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

On March 4, Houston District Judge Kevin Fine granted a pretrial motion in a capital case and declared the death penalty in Texas unconstitutional. Judge Fine said the state’s law violates a defendant’s right to due process because of the risk of executing an innocent person. The judge based his ruling on studies around the country and in Texas that indicated, “it can only be concluded that innocent people have been executed….Are you willing to have your brother, your father, your mother be the…

On March 3, a federal District Court barred the re-prosecution of former Ohio death row inmate Joe D’Ambrosio (pictured) for the murder of Tony Klann over 22 years ago. The court had ruled in 2006 that state prosecutors improperly withheld evidence about their star witness that could have exonerated D’Ambrosio at his 1989 trial. That ruling led to D’Ambrosio’s conviction and death sentence being vacated, and he was eventually released on bond pending a possible retrial. But the state delayed…

On March 2, Washington became the second state to switch its lethal injection method from the three-drug cocktail used in almost all states to a one-drug protocol. Ohio was the first state to change to the single-drug protocol after the failed execution attempt involving Romell Broom. Broom was ultimately removed from the execution chamber when the correctional officers were unable to complete the execution. In Washington, the one-drug protocol will be the presumed method, but the three-drug…

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 Porterfield, whom she hired to kill her husband, is…

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 of Criminal Appeals concluded that Hood should be executed anyway.

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 selection; one actually observed the juror’s demeanor during…