Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

On September 26, 2024, a Japanese court for­mal­ly acquit­ted 88-year-old Iwao Hakamada (pic­tured), who was wrong­ful­ly sen­tenced to death in 1968 for the mur­der of his for­mer boss and fam­i­ly in Shizuoka, Japan. After 46 years on death row, and anoth­er decade of lit­i­ga­tion, Judge Kunii Tsuneishi of the Shizuoka District Court ruled that blood-stained cloth­ing used to con­vict Mr. Hakamada was fab­ri­cat­ed long after the murders. ​“The court can­not accept the fact that the blood stain would remain…

Executions in Oklahoma and Alabama, sched­uled just hours apart on September 26, high­light issues of pro­por­tion­al sen­tenc­ing and exper­i­men­tal meth­ods of exe­cu­tion. Emmanuel Littlejohn, who was exe­cut­ed at 10:17am CT, had received a rec­om­men­da­tion of clemen­cy from Oklahoma’s Pardon and Parole Board because of con­flict­ing evi­dence about whether he or a co-defen­­dant actu­al­ly killed the vic­tim. Alan Miller, sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed in the evening of September 26, sur­vived a botched lethal…

On September 23, 2024, the Missouri Supreme Court heard oral argu­ments on the joint motion by Marcellus Williams’ legal team and St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney (PA) Wesley Bell to over­turn a low­er court’s deci­sion reject­ing Mr. Williams’ appeal. Later the same day, the state supreme court unan­i­mous­ly denied the motion, stat­ing that there was ​“no cred­i­ble evi­dence of actu­al inno­cence or any show­ing of a con­sti­tu­tion­al error under­min­ing con­fi­dence in the orig­i­nal judg­ment.” Also the same…

On September 19, 2024, attor­neys for Khalil Allah, for­mer­ly known as Freddie Eugene Owens, filed an emer­gency motion for a stay of exe­cu­tion after receiv­ing a signed affi­davit from his code­fen­dant in the 1997 shoot­ing death of Irene Graves that Mr. Allah ​“was not present” dur­ing the crime. Just two days ahead of Mr. Allah’s sched­uled exe­cu­tion, Steven Golden, who was also charged in Ms. Graves’ death, recant­ed his tri­al tes­ti­mo­ny and said that Mr. Allah ​“is not the per­son who shot Irene…

On September 17, 2024, attor­neys for Texas death row pris­on­er Robert Roberson filed a clemen­cy peti­tion accom­pa­nied by let­ters from hun­dreds of sup­port­ers, includ­ing emi­nent sci­en­tists and med­ical pro­fes­sion­als, a bipar­ti­san group of Texas leg­is­la­tors, and for­mer lead Detective Brian Wharton, urg­ing the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Greg Abbott to reduce Mr. Roberson’s sen­tence. Mr. Roberson is cur­rent­ly sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on October 17, 2024. He was convicted and…

“From start to fin­ish, it is so bad­ly bro­ken that we can­not know whether some­one who has been con­demned to death is actu­al­ly deserv­ing of the ulti­mate penal­ty,” wrote for­mer U.S. Magistrate Judge Andy Lester in a September 12, 2024 op-ed for The Oklahoman. Before car­ry­ing out any new exe­cu­tions, Mr. Lester calls on the state to imple­ment new reforms to its ​“bro­ken” cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment sys­tem. Although the Oklahoma Death Penalty Review Commission pro­vid­ed 45 spe­cif­ic recommendations and…

The American Bar Association’s Criminal Justice Section has announced its forth­com­ing annu­al report, The State of Criminal Justice 2024, exam­in­ing the state of the American criminal legal…

On September 11, 2024, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) dis­missed Robert Roberson’s request for habeas relief with­out review­ing the mer­its of any of his five claims, cit­ing a fail­ure to meet pro­ce­dur­al require­ments, despite the inclu­sion of new, pre­vi­ous­ly unavail­able med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence in the appli­ca­tion. The TCCA also denied Mr. Roberson’s motion for a stay of exe­cu­tion, which remains sched­uled for October 17, 2024.

On September 5, 2024, Idaho’s Fourth Judicial District Court dis­missed death-sen­­tenced pris­on­er Thomas Creech’s post-con­vic­­tion claim, which sought to pre­vent a sec­ond exe­cu­tion attempt on the grounds that it would vio­late the Fifth Amendment’s dou­ble jeop­ardy clause, Eighth Amendment’s pro­hi­bi­tion against cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment, and equiv­a­lent state con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­vi­sions. The state’s first attempt to exe­cute Mr. Creech on February 28, 2024 was halt­ed because correctional staff…

Best-sel­l­­ing author of The Innocent Man and for­mer crim­i­nal defense lawyer John Grisham ​“nev­er, not once” believed that any of the hun­dreds of clients he rep­re­sent­ed were wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed. In a September 5, 2024, op-ed, Mr. Grisham writes that he just assumed the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem always got it right. Now, writ­ing for the sec­ond time about Robert Roberson’s case, Mr. Grisham acknowl­edges that was ​“a wrong assump­tion.” He argues that ​“Robert Roberson is inno­cent because the…