Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In North Carolina and Nevada, family members of murder victims are speaking out against the death penalty, encouraging officials in both states to commute their death row. At a press conference (pictured) outside the North Carolina governor’s mansion on December 10, 2022, 19 members of the North Carolina Coalition for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (NCCADP) Homicide Survivor Engagement Group read a letter urging Governor Roy Cooper to abolish the death penalty and commute the sentences of…

The Alabama Supreme Court announced a change to its rules of appellate procedure on January 12, 2023, eliminating automatic plain error review for trial errors in death penalty cases. This new rule removes a significant safeguard for capital defendants’ rights, which had been in place since Alabama reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Without the review, capital defendants who were erroneously convicted or sentenced could spend many more years on death row before the error is discovered. The…

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals (OCCA) has reset the state’s execution schedule, slowing down the pace at which the 25-person execution spree it authorized in July 2022 would move forward. The order, issued January 24, 2023 in response to a motion filed by newly inaugurated Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (pictured) on January 17, rescheduled the execution dates of seven men who were to be put to death between February 16 and August 3, 2023. The court set new execution dates…

Executions in Arizona are effectively on hold after Governor Katie Hobbs (pictured) ordered a review of the state’s execution process following three botched executions in 2022 and Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a motion to withdraw the state’s only pending request for a death warrant. The two state officials, elected in the November midterm elections against opponents who falsely claimed the 2020 Presidential election had been stolen, said their actions will help ensure transparency and…

A Kansas capital defendant is challenging the prosecution’s decision to pursue the death penalty in his case, invoking a heightened standard of review the Kansas constitution applies to infringements of fundamental rights. The pretrial challenge, which will be the subject of a hearing in the Sedgwick County District Court beginning February 6, 2023, was filed by the ACLU in the case of Kyle Young, an African-American defendant who faces capital charges in a 2020 double murder at a Wichita…

A Russian national on the U.S. federal death row has filed a civil rights lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the federal government’s use of automatic and prolonged solitary confinement to house individuals sentenced to death. The class action complaint, filed January 12, 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana on behalf of Jurijus Kadamovas (pictured) and 37 other prisoners incarcerated on death row in the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute…

Alabama death-row prisoner Kenneth Smith spent four hours on November 17, 2022 strapped to an execution gurney while state prosecutors attempted to lift a stay of execution issued by a federal appeals court and his execution team repeatedly failed in attempts to set the intravenous execution line intended to kill him. He was left strapped to the gurney after prison officials called off the botched execution, unaware that he was not to be put to death that night. These revelations, and more…

Tennessee will not resume executions until it fixes systemic problems with the administration of its execution protocol, Governor Bill Lee has announced. “It’s a very important issue that has to be done correctly,” Lee told reporters on January 5, 2023. “And we will take the time to fix the protocol and to make certain that we don’t move forward until everything’s in place.” Lee, a Republican, halted the execution of Oscar Smith on April 21, 2022 after learning that the Tennessee Department of…

The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed the denial of relief to a Texas death-row prisoner whose request for new trial is supported by local prosecutors. In a two-sentence decision, the Court granted certiorari to Areli Escobar, vacated the judgment of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA), and sent the case back for reconsideration. The Court’s summary reversal relied on Travis County prosecutors’ admission that Escobar’s conviction is based on “flawed and misleading forensic evidence.”

Oklahoma has carried out the first of eleven executions scheduled for 2023, administering a lethal injection to death-row prisoner Scott Eizember on January 12. The execution was a continuation of a 29-month execution spree between August 2022 and December 2024 in which the state intends to put 25 prisoners to death — 58% of the state’s death row. It was the third execution of 2023, following the January 3 execution of Amber McLaughlin in Missouri and the January 10 execution of Robert Fratta…