Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In a coin­ci­dence that brought atten­tion to the aging of death row across the United States, the old­est death-row pris­on­ers in Tennessee and Texas faced exe­cu­tion in their respec­tive states on April 21, 2022. After the U.S. Supreme Court denied stays of exe­cu­tion for both pris­on­ers, their cas­es took different…

On April 22, 1987, the United States Supreme Court ruled in McCleskey v. Kemp that the same types of sta­tis­ti­cal data that were rou­tine­ly accept­ed as proof of racial dis­crim­i­na­tion in hous­ing, employ­ment, edu­ca­tion, and the denial of oth­er civ­il rights were not suf­fi­cient as proof that a death sen­tence had been unconstitutionally…

Days after his office asked to set an exe­cu­tion date for Texas death row pris­on­er John Ramirez, Nueces County District Attorney Mark Gonzalez (pic­tured) asked Ramirez’s tri­al court to…

A Missouri cap­i­tal defen­dant whose jury was the first in nine years to rec­om­mend the death penal­ty in the state is chal­leng­ing the ver­dict as based sole­ly on a nonexistent aggravating…

Robert Roberson with daugh­ter Nikki. Courtesy of the…

An ami­cus brief filed in the U.S. Supreme Court in sup­port of Arizona death-row pris­on­er John Montenegro Cruz presents evi­dence that Latinx defen­dants are par­tic­u­lar­ly vul­ner­a­ble to juror bias regard­ing deter­mi­na­tions of future…

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…

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…

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…

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