Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

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…

DPI​’s new series focus­es on aca­d­e­m­ic research and arti­cles in the field of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment. This month’s article is ​“Sacred Victims: Fifty Years of Data on Victim Race and Sex as Predictors of Execution,” in The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, co-authored by Professors Scott Phillips (Department of Sociology & Criminology), Justin Marceau, Sam Kamin, and a J.D. pro­gram alum­na, Nicole King, from the Sturm College of Law at the University of…

In an August 31, 2024, edi­to­r­i­al from The New York Times, the newspaper’s edi­to­r­i­al board writes that cap­i­tal punishment is ​“immoral, uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and use­less as a deter­rent to crime,” and asserts that President Joseph Biden should fol­low through with his cam­paign pledge to end the fed­er­al death penal­ty. The Times believes ​“it would be an appro­pri­ate and humane finale to his pres­i­den­cy for Mr. Biden to ful­fill that pledge and try to elim­i­nate the death penal­ty for federal…

In a new edi­to­r­i­al, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette argues that the death penalty is ​“nev­er the jus­tice that is called for” and achieves ​“noth­ing of val­ue except the sat­is­fac­tion of vengeance.” The Post-Gazette describes the death of 6‑week-old Leon Katz in June as an ​“almost unfath­omable” crime and a ​“vio­la­tion of pri­mor­dial inno­cence” — but argues that Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr.’s deci­sion to seek the death penal­ty against Nicole Virzi, Leon’s alleged…