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 punishment. The enactment of the new law by a Republican-dominated legislature and a Democratic governor reflected broad bipartisan support for limiting the scope of Kentucky’s death penalty statute.

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 evidence. In a motion filed April 4, 2022, lawyers for Oscar Smith had argued that evidence from “touch DNA” — a new DNA testing technology — on an awl used in the murder of Smith’s estranged wife and her two sons in 1989 “definitively excluded” Smith and suggested that another, unknown male had been involved in the murders. The three…

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 2003. On April 6, 2022, two days after the U.S. Supreme Court had declined to review the county prosecutors’ appeal of a federal court ruling granting Randolph a new trial, District Attorney Fran Chardo filed a motion to enter an order of…

Ketanji Brown Jackson has been confirmed as the first African-American woman to serve as a justice of the United States Supreme Court. On April 7, 2022, by a vote of 53 – 47, the U.S. Senate confirmed President Joe Biden’s nomination of Judge Jackson to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, for whom she previously served as a law clerk. Jackson will be sworn in after Breyer’s retirement takes effect at the end of the 2021 – 22 Supreme Court term. “I have dedicated my career to…

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 values. “The state has had nearly a year to demonstrate that it will not be carrying out executions with expired drugs but has failed to do so,” Jennifer Moreno, one of Dixon’s attorneys…

In a move sharply criticized by rights advocates as a violation of international human rights law, Singapore has resumed executions for non-violent drug offenses. On March 30, 2022, the authoritarian city/state hanged Abdul Kahar bin Othman on charges of drug trafficking, its first execution since November 2019. The execution of the 68-year-old bin Othman may presage a spate of executions, human rights leaders feared, following the denial of appeals earlier in March of an intellectually…

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 methods. The request was filed in the South Carolina Supreme Court on March 21, 2022 on behalf of Brad Keith Sigmon, Freddie Eugene Owens, and Gary Dubose Terry, just days after South Carolina Department of Corrections officials announced they were prepared to perform executions by firing…

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, 2022. In a petition filed March 30, 2022, the 78-year-old Buntion’s lawyers asked the Board to recommend that Gov. Greg Abbott grant him clemency, arguing that his death sentence was imposed by a jury that falsely predicted he would pose a…

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 cases. Rountree and her co-author Dr. Mary Rose of the University of Texas, reviewed and analyzed 176 verdict forms completed by juries in federal death penalty cases, focusing on three…

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, 2022, the Court granted John Montenegro Cruz’s petition to hear his case, but limited its review to the question of whether the procedural rule applied by the Arizona courts to…