Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

John Huffington (pictured) has been exonerated of all the charges that sent him to death row over 40 years after his initial wrongful conviction. On January 13, 2023, outgoing Maryland Governor Larry Hogan granted a full pardon to Huffington, stating that evidence conclusively showed that his “convictions were in error.” After many appeals and two death sentences, Huffington eventually entered an “Alford Plea” in 2017, which led to a reduced sentence and eventually his release. This type of…

In the February 2023 edition of Discussions with DPIC, former Oregon Superintendent of Prisons Frank Thompson speaks with DPIC Managing Director Anne Holsinger about how his experiences as a corrections officer — as well as being a murder victim’s family member — have affected his views on capital punishment. Thompson oversaw the only two executions performed in Oregon in the past 50 years and was responsible for developing the execution protocol. He said the process of performing executions…

The cases of two defendants facing imminent execution raise concerns about the appropriateness of death sentences for those with severe mental illness or sharply-limiting mental disabilities. Andre Thomas is scheduled for execution on April 5, 2023 in Texas, despite suffering from mental illness so acute that he cut out both of his eyes and ate one, claiming that it was necessary to prevent the government from hearing his thoughts. Donald Dillbeck is scheduled for execution in Florida on…

In a 2022 article published in the Idaho Journal of Critical Legal Studies, author Sidney Balman (pictured), examines the relationship between racism and geographical arbitrariness in the application of the death penalty in the U.S. As in other areas of society, he finds that Black lives are not valued equally with others. He cites the Supreme Court’s decision in McCleskey v. Kemp (1987) as the main legal obstacle to reversing this bias affecting capital punishment. “Today,” he writes…

On February 16, 2023, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro announced that he will continue his predecessor’s moratorium on executions and called upon the Pennsylvania General Assembly to repeal the death penalty. At a press conference in Philadelphia, the newly-elected Shapiro explained how his position on capital punishment has evolved and how his experience as the state’s Attorney General revealed two truths about the death penalty in the Commonwealth: “The system is fallible, and the outcome…

Crosley Green was sentenced to death for murder in Florida in 1990 with an all-white non-unanimous jury. He was removed from death row in 2009 and resentenced to life in prison. He has always maintained his innocence and is now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn his conviction because critical evidence was withheld from his attorneys. There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime scene, but he was identified as the killer by the sole eyewitness, the victim’s girlfriend. Two…

In an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, Theodore B. Olson, former U.S. Solicitor General from 2001 to 2004 during President George W. Bush’s administration, called for a halt to the use of the death penalty against those implicated in the terrorist attacks of 9/11. He recommended that the capital proceedings against the defendants being held in Guantánamo Bay be brought “to as rapid and just a conclusion as possible.” Olson, whose wife was killed on 9/11, stated, “If the 9/11 defendants held…

In a letter to Governor Kay Ivey (pictured) of Alabama, over 170 local faith leaders from many denominations and traditions across the state asked her to commit to a “comprehensive, independent, and external review of Alabama’s death penalty procedures” in the wake of a series of botched executions. The church representatives thanked the governor for pausing executions but urged her to ensure transparency and independence in reviewing how Alabama performs executions. The letter also raised…

Professor Craig Haney (pictured) of the University of California, Santa Cruz, Professor Frank Baumgartner of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Karen Steele, a criminal defense attorney in Oregon, examined age and race data from nearly 9,000 death sentences imposed in the U.S. from 1972 to 2021. They found that the racial disparities that plague the death penalty were more pronounced in cases involving juvenile and late adolescent defendants. Building on the findings of a 2022…

On January 26, South Carolina’s Supreme Court ordered the state to turn over information about its attempts to obtain lethal injection drugs, as part of a suit challenging aspects of the state’s methods of execution. South Carolina has not carried out an execution since 2011, stating that it was too difficult to obtain lethal injection drugs. The Court’s order required the state to disclose what efforts it has made to acquire them. A lower court had ruled that the alternate methods of…