Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has affirmed a Nevada district court’s grant of a new trial to death-row prisoner Mark Rogers, blasting the state for providing him with inexperienced counsel who lacked the knowledge and resources to competently defend a capital trial. In a 2 – 1 decision issued on February 14, 2022, the appeals panel upheld a September 23, 2019 ruling by District Court Judge Gloria M. Navarro holding that the public defender assigned to represent Rogers…

Lawyers for Texas death-row prisoner Melissa Lucio (pictured) have moved to vacate her April 27, 2022 execution date and remove the judge and district attorney in her case because of conflicts of interest stemming from their employment of key members of Lucio’s original defense team. Lucio’s lead trial counsel, Peter Gilman, is now employed as an assistant district attorney in the Cameron County District Attorney’s office and Irma Gilman, who was counsel’s paralegal at the time of trial, is…

A new national poll has found that bipartisan majorities of Americans oppose seeking the death penalty against vulnerable groups of defendants who historically have been disproportionately subjected to its use. The poll, conducted by the Justice Research Group (JRG) November 3 to 5, 2021 and released February 17, 2022, found that Democrats, Republicans, and Independents by margins of more than 30 percentage points opposed the use of the death penalty against people with severe mental illness…

President Joe Biden has nominated federal appeals court judge Ketanji Brown Jackson (pictured) to serve as a U.S. Supreme Court justice, fulfilling his campaign pledge to select an African American woman for the Court. If confirmed, Jackson would be the first Black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court. Announcing Jackson’s nomination on February 25, 2022, President Biden said, “For too long, our government, our courts haven’t looked like America. I believe it’s time that we have a…

In the February 2022 episode of Discussions with DPIC, federal public defender, Amanda Bass (pictured, right), and Justice for Julius advocate Cece Jones-Davis (pictured, left) speak with Death Penalty Information Center Managing Director Anne Holsinger about the questionable conviction and near execution of former Oklahoma death-row prisoner, Julius Jones. They discuss how incompetent representation and prosecutorial misconduct sent Jones to death row in Oklahoma County, how advocacy on his…

Despite the absence of evidence that the death penalty protects police or promotes public safety, lawmakers in several states that have abolished capital punishment have introduced bills to reinstate capital punishment for the murders of police officers. An attempt during the 2022 legislative session in Virginia to reinstate the death penalty for killings of police officers failed in committee. The state abolished the death penalty in February 2021, and a bill to narrowly reinstate the state’s…

Bills that would exempt individuals with severe mental illness from the death penalty have taken major steps forward in the Kentucky and South Dakota legislatures. The Kentucky House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly (76 – 19) on February 9, 2022, to advance its severe mental illness exemption, HB 269, to the state senate. The South Dakota Senate followed on February 22, voting 21 – 14 to pass SB 159. Both bills have Republican sponsors and received bipartisan support. The measures exempt…

Members of the Arizona Jewish community have filed suit to bar the state from executing prisoners in its gas chamber, using the same substance employed by the Nazis during the Holocaust to murder more than one million people. On February 15, 2022, the ACLU of Arizona filed a taxpayers’ complaint in a Maricopa County trial court on behalf of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Phoenix, along with its executive director and a member of its board, arguing that the state’s planned…

Calling capital punishment in the U.S. “broken,” 56 elected prosecutors from across the country have issued a joint statement urging systemic changes to end the death penalty nationwide. As an initial step, the prosecutors pledged to not seek the death penalty “against people with intellectual disabilities, post-traumatic stress disorder, histories of traumatic brain injury, or other intellectual or cognitive challenges that diminish their ability to fully understand and regulate their own…

When Oklahoma executed Gilbert Postelle on February 17, 2022, it came with a dubious distinction. The intellectually impaired man who was 18 years old at the time of his offense became the 44^th person prosecuted in Oklahoma County to be put to death since executions resumed in the U.S. in 1977. His death made the county the nation’s third-most prolific county executioner over the past half-century, tied with Tarrant and Bexar counties in Texas. (Click to enlarge graphic.) Postelle was the…