Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The Oklahoma Attorney General’s office has agreed to a stay of execution for a severely mentally ill death-row prisoner who may be incompetent to be executed, while the state’s Pardon and Parole Board denied clemency to two other prisoners set to be put to death in Oklahoma’s five-month scheduled execution spree. After hearing testimony on November 29, 2021 that Wade Lay experiences paranoid delusions from schizophrenia that leave him without a rational understanding of the reason for his…

In the December 2021 episode of Discussions with DPIC, Death Penalty Information Center Deputy Director Ngozi Ndulue interviews State Representative Jean Schmidt (pictured) about her work as a primary sponsor of a bill in the Ohio House of Representatives that would abolish capital punishment in the state. A long-time Republican elected official, Rep. Schmidt also served in the U.S. House of Representatives for ten years. She avidly supported the death penalty early in her career but now is an…

More than 2,000 cities across the world lit up monuments on November 30, 2021 in a global demonstration to raise awareness about the death penalty. The international campaign — called “Cities for Life” — was organized by the Community of Sant’Egidio, a lay Catholic association dedicated to social service. Buildings in 2,446 cities, including the European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium, were lit in protest of the death penalty and in support of the sanctity of life. Four United States cities…

The sister of a terminally ill death-row prisoner who has been in hospice care since 2019 has asked the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole to recommend that he be granted clemency so he can “die on God’s time.” In emotional testimony presented virtually on November 30, 2021, Angelinna Pizzuto told the parole board members that her brother, Gerald Pizzuto, Jr. (pictured), had been repeatedly beaten and raped by their stepfather throughout his childhood, and that social service agencies had…

Alabama death-row prisoner Doyle Lee Hamm (pictured), whose botched execution attempt was called off in 2018 after 2½ hours of unsuccessful attempts to set an intravenous execution line, has died on death row. He was 64 years old. Hamm had been suffering from terminal cranial and lymphatic cancer since 2014, which contributed to his death on November 27, 2021, his lawyer, Columbia University Law School Professor Bernard Harcourt, said. Harcourt told Birmingham investigative reporter Beth…

More than 42 years after his wrongful capital murder conviction in June 1979, a Missouri judge has set Kevin Strickland (pictured) free. On November 23, 2021, Judge James Welsh granted a motion filed by Jackson County Prosecutor Jean Peters Baker under a newly enacted Missouri law allowing local prosecutors to petition for the release of prisoners they believe to be innocent. No physical evidence linked Strickland to the 1978 Kansas City triple murders for which he was convicted; two other men…

The Committee on Revision of the Penal Code, created by the California state legislature to review the state’s criminal laws, has issued a report unanimously recommending that the state repeal its death penalty. The six-member committee’s 39-page Death Penalty Report, released November 17, 2021, also offers intermediate recommendations for reducing the size of California’s nearly 700-person death row — the largest of any state in the country. “After a thorough examination, the Committee has…

After years of seeking to execute Tennessee death-row prisoner Pervis Payne (pictured) for a double-murder he has long insisted he did not commit, the Shelby County District Attorney’s office has conceded that Payne is ineligible for the death penalty. In a motion filed in a Memphis trial court on November 18, 2021, the district attorney’s office withdrew its request for a hearing to contest Payne’s claim that his execution would violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual…

Public support for the death penalty again polled at a half-century low, with opposition remaining at its highest level since May 1966, according to the 2021 Gallup poll on Americans’ attitudes about capital punishment. Fifty-four percent of respondents to Gallup’s annual crime survey conducted between October 1 and October 19, 2021 told the polling organization that they were “in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder.” The figure was the lowest since 50% of respondents…

Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt has granted clemency to death-row prisoner Julius Jones (pictured). In an order announced four hours before his scheduled execution on November 18, 2021, Stitt commuted Jones’ death sentence to life without possibility of parole. Stitt granted the commutation “on the condition that [Jones] shall never again be eligible to apply for, be considered for, or receive any additional commutation, pardon, or parole.” In the months leading up to Stitt’s decision, the…