Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Kentucky has become the sec­ond state in the U.S. to bar impos­ing the death penal­ty on those diag­nosed as seri­ous­ly men­tal­ly ill. On April 8, 2022, Governor Andy Beshear (pic­tured) signed HB 269 into law, as Kentucky joined neigh­bor­ing Ohio in exempt­ing severe­ly men­tal­ly ill defen­dants from capital…

A Nashville tri­al judge has denied a Tennessee death-row prisoner’s motion to reopen his case and halt his sched­uled April 21, 2022 exe­cu­tion in light of new DNA…

A Harrisburg, Pennsylvania tri­al court has grant­ed the appli­ca­tion of the Dauphin County District Attorney’s office to with­draw all charges against Samuel Randolph, IV, com­plet­ing his exon­er­a­tion of a dou­ble mur­der that sent him to Pennsylvania​’s death row in…

Ketanji Brown Jackson has been con­firmed as the first African-American woman to serve as a jus­tice of the United States Supreme…

The Arizona Supreme Court has set an exe­cu­tion date of May 11 for Clarence Dixon, a death-row pris­on­er who is blind and has such severe men­tal ill­ness that he was once judged legal­ly insane. Dixon is a mem­ber of the Navajo Nation, which has long opposed the death penal­ty as incon­sis­tent with its culture and…

In a move sharply crit­i­cized by rights advo­cates as a vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al human rights law, Singapore has resumed exe­cu­tions for non-violent drug…

Lawyers for three men on South Carolina​’s death row have asked the state supreme court to defer set­ting exe­cu­tion dates until the courts resolve pend­ing legal chal­lenges to the state’s controversial execution…

Texas’ old­est death-row pris­on­er, Carl Wayne Buntion (pic­tured), has filed a peti­tion with the state Board of Pardons and Parole seek­ing com­mu­ta­tion of his death sen­tence to life with­out parole. Buntion is cur­rent­ly sched­uled to be exe­cut­ed on April 21,…

In the March 2022 episode of Discussions With DPIC, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Senior Lecturer Meredith Rountree speaks with Death Penalty Information Center Executive Director Robert Dunham about her study of the types of evi­dence that influ­ence juror deci­­sion-mak­ing at the sen­tenc­ing stage of capital…

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to review the case of an Arizona death-row pris­on­er whose sen­tence was upheld by the state’s appel­late courts even though his tri­al judge uncon­sti­tu­tion­al­ly refused to inform the jury that he would be inel­i­gi­ble for parole if sen­tenced to life in prison. In an order issued March 28, 2021, the Court grant­ed John Montenegro Cruz​’s peti­tion to hear his case, but lim­it­ed its review to the ques­tion of whether the…