Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Justices John Paul Stevens and Clarence Thomas dis­agreed over whether to grant a stay of exe­cu­tion to Cecil Johnson, Jr., who was was con­vict­ed of mur­der in a 1980 shoot­ing at a con­ve­nience store in Tennessee. Johnson had been on death row for near­ly three decades. Justice Stevens said this lengthy time between his sen­tenc­ing and exe­cu­tion could amount to cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment: “[T]he delay itself sub­jects death row…

On November 30, the United States Supreme Court over­turned the death sen­tence of George Porter, a Korean War vet­er­an from Florida who had been con­vict­ed of mur­der in 1988. The Court stat­ed that Porter’s tri­al lawyer failed to inves­ti­gate and present ample mit­i­gat­ing evi­dence, includ­ing the fact that Porter’s bat­tle ser­vice in the war left him severe­ly trau­ma­tized. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit had held that such…

Christopher Slobogin, Professor of Law and Psychiatry at Vanderbilt University, has writ­ten an eval­u­a­tion of Florida​’s death penal­ty to be pub­lished in a forth­com­ing edi­tion of the Elon University Law Review. The eval­u­a­tion is based on a study by an assess­ment team spon­sored by the American Bar Association. Florida is one of the lead­ing states in sen­tenc­ing peo­ple to death, but it also has the most death row exonerations…

On November 23, Kentucky Public Advocate Ed Monahan and Louisville Metro Chief Public Defender Dan Goyette called on the gov­er­nor and the state’s Attorney General to stay all exe­cu­tions until an assess­ment team formed by the American Bar Association can objec­tive­ly review the state’s death penal­ty. Monahan and Goyette wrote let­ters ask­ing Attorney General Jack Conway not to request any fur­ther execution warrants…

James Tyrone Woodson’s death sen­tence was over­turned by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 because the jury had not been allowed to con­sid­er any mit­i­gat­ing fac­tors in his life or about his periph­er­al role in the crime. The Court not only reject­ed Woodson’s death sen­tence, but held that a manda­to­ry death penal­ty sys­tem was uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. Woodson had been con­vict­ed in 1974 of first-degree mur­der, which was auto­mat­i­cal­ly pun­ish­able by the death…

The Last Lawyer: The Fight to Save Death Row Inmates is a book by John Temple about the coura­geous work of a death penal­ty defense attor­ney in the south. Ken Rose is an attor­ney at the Center for Death Penalty Litigation in North Carolina. He has han­dled many cap­i­tal cas­es, but the focus of this book is his defense of Bo Jones, a men­tal­ly hand­i­capped farm­hand con­vict­ed of a murder that…

Virginia has not had a death ver­dict from a jury since March 2008, the longest stretch of time with­out a death ver­dict since the death penal­ty was rein­stat­ed in the 1970s. Nationally, there has also been a decline in death sen­tences: accord­ing to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 115 death sen­tences in 2007, 65% less than the 326 that were hand­ed down in 1995. In Virginia, part of this decline might be attrib­uted to a change in state law…