Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

Melissa…

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On November 6, 2024, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (TCCA) vot­ed 6 – 3 to grant death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­er Randy Halprin a new tri­al. The TCCA decid­ed that the orig­i­nal tri­al judge, Vickers Cunningham,​“was actu­al­ly biased against him at the time of tri­al because Halprin is Jewish.” The Court wrote in its rul­ing that the​“uncon­tra­dict­ed evi­dence,” includ­ing tes­ti­mo­ny from friends and fam­i­ly of Judge Cunningham regard­ing his use of deroga­to­ry and racial slurs…

On November 4, 2024, the United States Supreme Courts released its order in the case of Hamm v. Smith, 604 U.S. ​​_​(2024). The peti­tion for cer­tio­rari, filed by the State of Alabama last year, involved a pris­on­er named Joseph Clifton Smith whose death sen­tence was vacat­ed in 2021 after a United States dis­trict court found he had intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty. Mr. Smith had tak­en five IQ tests, four of which placed his IQ in the low- to mid-70s, the range gen­er­al­ly accepted by…

Kentucky…

The Death Penalty Information Center is pleased to share a pow­er­ful new resource illus­trat­ing the dire con­se­quences of inad­e­quate legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion in cap­i­tal cas­es: a data­base of cas­es that were dis­missed because they were not filed by the statu­to­ry dead­line. The list of cas­es, devel­oped by Professor Eric M. Freedman (pic­tured) and law stu­dent Paul Sessa of Hofstra University School of Law, will be updat­ed by DPI going for­ward. Mr. Sessa and Professor Freedman…

“If you are charged with cap­i­tal mur­der … you are less like­ly to get…

Robert Roberson with daugh­ter Nikki. Courtesy of the…

Death-sen­­­tenced pris­on­ers with cred­i­ble evi­dence of inno­cence have gained sig­nif­i­cant atten­tion this month with the exe­cu­tion of Marcellus Williams in Missouri, the near-exe­cu­­­tion of Robert Roberson in Texas, and the U.S. Supreme Court argu­ments in Glossip v. Oklahoma. There is a com­mon mis­con­cep­tion that DNA evi­dence is wide­ly avail­able in all cas­es and cen­tral to exon­er­a­tions, but the real­i­ty is that DNA exon­er­a­tions in death penal­ty cases are…

South Carolina National Guard, Public domain, via Wikimedia…