Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

In a 5 – 4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the long-standing practice of using federal civil rights suits to challenge state execution methods. The Court ruled in favor of death-row prisoner Michael Nance, rejecting Georgia’s contention that such challenges must be brought in federal habeas corpus proceedings when the death-row prisoner proposes an alternative method not authorized by state law. A contrary ruling would have severely limited challenges to execution methods. Matthew…

The city of Idaho Falls, Idaho has agreed to a settlement of $11.7 million with an exoneree who spent 20 years in prison for a rape and murder he did not commit. Christopher Tapp (pictured, center, with Stacy Tapp and Idaho Innocence Project Director Greg Hampikian at the Idaho Senate Chambers as they unanimously supported the Compensation for Wrongful Conviction Bill) was convicted in 1998 of the rape and murder of Angie Dodge based upon a false confession coerced by police who threatened him…

Tennessee executions could be on hold for years, as the state conducts an independent investigation into widespread non-compliance with its execution protocol and litigates the constitutionality of revisions expected to be made to its execution procedures. The anticipated delay, first reported by the Associated Press June 13, 2022, is a likely by-product of a decision by Governor Bill Lee to cancel all executions scheduled in the state for the remainder of 2022 and an agreement entered into by…

On the twentieth anniversary of its landmark decision in Atkins v. Virginia prohibiting the use of the death penalty against individuals with intellectual disability, the U.S. Supreme Court let stand a Florida case that creates a procedural loophole that allows those executions to continue. In a one-line ruling issued June 21, 2022, the Court summarily denied a petition for writ of certiorari filed on behalf of Florida death-row prisoner Joe Nixon, declining to review the state’s refusal to…

An African-American teenager who was convicted and sentenced to death in Pennsylvania on false charges that he had murdered a white woman has been exonerated, 91 years after he was executed. On June 13, 2022, Delaware County Court of Common Pleas Judge Kevin Kelly granted a motion filed jointly by lawyers for Alexander McClay Williams and the Delaware County District Attorney’s office to posthumously overturn Williams’ conviction and death sentence. (Williams is pictured with then-District…

Oklahoma legislators announced that an independent investigation revealed strong evidence of Richard Glossip’s innocence. Glossip, who came within hours of execution in 2015, is the second prisoner the Oklahoma Attorney General is seeking to execute this fall. After the investigation report was released, Glossip’s attorneys filed a motion in the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, asking that an execution date not be set so that Glossip can seek post-conviction review based on the findings.

The percentage of Americans who find the death penalty morally acceptable remains near a record low, according to a new poll released by the Gallup organization on June 9, 2022. 55% of respondents to Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs Survey told Gallup that they consider the death penalty morally acceptable, fractionally above the record low of 54% in the organization’s 2020 survey. The number matches the 55% level of acceptability reported in the 2021 Values and Beliefs survey. The poll…

At his June 8, 2022 execution in Arizona, Frank Atwood helped prison officials find a suitable vein for the IV line that would administer the lethal-injection drugs to end his life. Jimmy Jenkins, a reporter at the Arizona Republic who witnessed the execution, called the experience of watching Atwood direct the state to his vein “surreal.” He wrote in his account of the execution that “I have witnessed life. And I have witnessed death. But nothing could have prepared me for the surreal…

The United States Supreme Court has declined to review a case in which the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) flouted a previous Supreme Court ruling by denying relief to a death-row prisoner a second time after the Court had returned the case with directions to further consider defense counsel’s failure to investigate and present a “tidal wave” of available mitigating evidence in the penalty phase of his capital trial. The Court’s liberal justices dissented from the conservative…

Oklahoma state prosecutors are pushing to schedule 25 executions over approximately two years, after a federal judge denied death-row prisoners’ challenge to the state’s controversial lethal-injection protocol. On June 10, 2022, Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to set execution dates for 25 of the 28 prisoners who were parties to the execution-protocol challenge. The request came just four days after Judge Stephen Friot’s ruling that the…