Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

January 11, 2023 marks the twentieth anniversary of former Illinois Governor George Ryan’s decision to grant clemency to every death row prisoner in Illinois, the largest blanket clemency in the modern era of the death penalty. It was a watershed moment in both Illinois’ criminal justice history and in the ongoing national conversation about the death penalty. In a 2020 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Ryan explained what led him to make the decision to commute 167 death sentences, even…

Nearly 47 years after being convicted of a quadruple murder, Florida death-row prisoner Tommy Zeigler has finally been permitted to independently conduct new DNA testing on evidence he claims will prove his innocence. Circuit Court Judge Patricia L. Strowbridge approved Zeigler’s request for DNA testing in October 2022. As soon as her ruling was finalized in December, more than 100 pieces of previously untested evidence were shipped to a California lab to be tested at Zeigler’s own expense.

Less than two years after being exonerated in two different cases, Philadelphia death-row exoneree Christopher Williams (pictured) has been murdered. Williams, who spent nearly three decades in prison, including 25 years on death row, for separate wrongful murder convictions, was fatally shot after attending the funeral of Tyree Little, another formerly incarcerated man, in North Philadelphia on December 16, 2022. Philadelphia prosecutors framed Williams for six murders and subjected him to…

Longtime civil and human rights lawyer, Diann Rust-Tierney, the executive director of Georgetown University’s Racial Justice Institute, joins Death Penalty Information Center executive director Robert Dunham in the first DPIC podcast of 2023 for a discussion of race, human rights, and the U.S. death penalty. Prof. Rust-Tierney, who served as the Robert F. Drinan visiting professor at the Georgetown University Law Center Human Rights Institute in 2020 – 2021 after sixteen years as executive…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) has granted an application by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to block a state trial court from reviewing a civil lawsuit filed by three death-row prisoners who challenged the state’s intent to execute them using lethal-injection drugs they claimed were “unlawfully obtained and long-expired.” In a ruling issued on January 4, 2023, the court directed Travis County Judge Catherine A. Mauzy “to refrain from issuing any order purporting to stay the…

An independent investigation into Tennessee’s execution practices has found that the state repeatedly failed to follow its own protocols in performing seven executions and preparing for an eighth between 2018 and 2022. Governor Bill Lee (pictured) commissioned the investigation in May 2022, shortly after he called off the execution of Oscar Smith “[d]ue to an oversight in preparation for lethal injection.” The report, which was publicly released on December 28, 2022, found that the same…

A Dallas County judge has recommended that the conviction and death sentence of a Jewish death-row prisoner be overturned because his trial was poisoned by the virulent anti-Semitic bigotry of the Texas judge who presided over his case. In a scathing 42-page set of fact findings issued on December 13, 2022, Judge Lela Lawrence May (pictured, left) recommended that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) grant a new trial to Randy Halprin (pictured, right), finding that former Dallas County…

Fulfilling a pledge made while campaigning for office, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema on December 23, 2022 signed legislation abolishing the nation’s death penalty (pictured). Zambia’s repeal of its colonial-era capital punishment law made it the 25^th sub-Saharan nation in Africa to abolish the death penalty. The new law also removed the offense of criminal defamation of the President from Zambia’s penal code. In announcing the repeals, President Hichilema tweeted: “Promised to amend…

On January 3, 2023, Missouri is set to execute Amber McLaughlin (pictured), the first transgender person scheduled to be put to death in the United States. Tried as Scott McLaughlin, her jury rejected three of the four aggravating circumstances advanced by St. Louis County prosecutors but split on its sentencing verdict. The vast majority of death-penalty states require a unanimous jury vote for death before the death penalty may be imposed. But under Missouri law, a nonunanimous jury vote is…

A Nevada judge has blocked a request from outgoing Governor Steve Sisolak (pictured) that the Nevada Pardons Board consider commuting all death sentences to life without the possibility of parole. Gov. Sisolak proposed on December 14, 2022 that the board discuss the commutation of the state’s 57 death sentences at its December 20 meeting. Just one day before that meeting was set to take place, Carson City District Court Judge James Wilson Jr. blocked the discussion and ruled that the proposal…