Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Five years after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a Texas death sentence when an expert witness had testified that a Black defendant posed an increased risk of committing future acts of violence because of his race, the Court has refused to review another Texas capital case in which the trial court permitted a juror to serve who expressed the very same view. On April 18, 2022, the Court denied a petition for certiorari filed on behalf of Kristopher Love challenging the trial court’s refusal…

On April 27, 2017, Kenneth Williams convulsed violently as he died on the gurney, the fourth prisoner put to death in an eleven-day execution spree in which Arkansas intended to execute eight men before its supply of execution drugs expired. It has not executed anyone since. Arkansas has now gone five years without an execution, bringing to 39 the number of U.S. states that have either abolished the death penalty or not carried out an execution in five or more years. (Click to enlarge map.)

The South Carolina Supreme Court has halted two scheduled executions, including one that would have been the state’s first execution by firing squad, amid ongoing legal challenges by state death-row prisoners to the state’s execution methods. In separate orders, the state’s high court issued stays of execution for Richard Moore, who was scheduled to be put to death by firing squad on April 29, 2022, and to Brad Sigmon, who faced a May 13, 2022 execution date. It was the third stay of execution…

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has halted the scheduled April 27, 2022 execution of Melissa Lucio and directed that a Cameron County trial court conduct a hearing to address evidence that she may be innocent of charges that she murdered her two-year-old daughter, Mariah (pictured, being held by her mother). In an unpublished three-page order issued April 25, 2022, the Texas appeals court granted Lucio review of four issues: that prosecutors obtained her conviction using false testimony…

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 paths. Oscar Franklin Smith, a 71-year-old who spent 22 years on death row in Tennessee, was notified while receiving communion that he had received a reprieve. Carl Wayne Buntion…

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 imposed. Although Warren McCleskey had presented a sophisticated statistical analysis of data from more than 2,500 murder cases in Georgia that showed that…

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 withdraw the order. Gonzalez, a former defense attorney who was elected in 2016 on a platform of criminal justice reform, said he has come to view the death penalty as “unethical” and that the request for an execution date was the result of a miscommunication within his office. “The undersigned District Attorney…

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 factor. On April 1, 2022, a St. Charles County jury in Marvin D. Rice’s capital resentencing trial recommended that he be sentenced to death for killing his ex-girlfriend, Annette Durham, during a dispute over custody of their child. In a Motion for new trial filed in the St. Charles County Circuit Court on April…

Forensics experts and three exonerees wrongfully convicted of murder based upon junk-science diagnoses of Shaken Baby Syndrome are urging the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) to overturn the conviction of death-row prisoner Robert Roberson (pictured with his daughter, Nikki). In separate friend-of-the-court briefs filed on April 8, 2022, the two groups argue that Shaken Baby Syndrome is an invalid medical diagnosis that should never be used as the basis of a murder conviction and that…

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 dangerousness. LatinoJustice PRLDEF, a civil rights organization that “advocates for and defends the constitutional rights of Latinos under the law,” filed an amicus brief in the case of Cruz v. Arizona supporting Cruz’s argument that Arizona violated his right to due…