Entries by Death Penalty Information Center


News 

Sep 082021

Legislators Plan New Attempt to Repeal Utah Capital Punishment Law, as Prominent County Attorney Announces He Will No Longer Seek the Death Penalty

Efforts to end the death penal­ty in Utah edged for­ward on September 8, 2021 as two Republican leg­is­la­tors revealed plans to intro­duce legislation to repeal and replace” the state’s cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment law and the pros­e­cut­ing attor­ney in the state’s sec­ond most pop­u­lous coun­ty declared that he would no longer seek the death penal­ty in future…

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News 

Sep 072021

Condemned Prisoner Asks U.S. Supreme Court to Stay His Execution Unless Texas Corrections Officials Permit His Religious Advisor to Lay on Hands’ While He is Being Put to Death

Texas death-row pris­on­er John Ramirez (pic­tured) is ask­ing the United States Supreme Court to stay his September 8, 2021 exe­cu­tion, argu­ing that the state’s refusal to allow his pas­tor to pray out loud with him and lay hands on him while he is being exe­cut­ed vio­lates fed­er­al law and his First Amendment right to free exercise of…

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News 

Sep 032021

Martinsville 7’ Granted Posthumous Pardons 70 Years After Their Executions

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has posthu­mous­ly par­doned sev­en young Black men who were sen­tenced to death by all-white juries and exe­cut­ed in Virginia sev­en decades ago on charges of rap­ing a white woman. Following years of advo­ca­cy from fam­i­ly mem­bers and oth­er advo­cates who pushed for guber­na­to­r­i­al action, Northam announced the posthu­mous par­dons on August 31, 2021, sur­pris­ing the fam­i­ly mem­bers and advo­cates who had come to the capi­tol expecting to…

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News 

Sep 022021

Oklahoma Attorney General Requests Seven Execution Dates Despite Pending Trial on Constitutionality of Lethal-Injection Protocol

Despite the pen­den­cy of a tri­al on the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the state’s lethal-injec­­tion pro­to­col, new­ly appoint­ed Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor has asked the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals to set exe­cu­tion dates for sev­en pris­on­ers on the state’s death row. If the court approves the exe­cu­tion dates, they would be Oklahoma’s first attempt to car­ry out exe­cu­tions in more than six years, end­ing a hia­tus brought on by a series of botched…

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News 

Sep 012021

California Court Rejects Challenge to Execution Moratorium

A California tri­al court has dis­missed a law­suit filed by con­ser­v­a­tive media com­men­ta­tor John V. Lacy that had chal­lenged the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the March 2019 exec­u­tive order by Governor Gavin Newsom (pic­tured) declar­ing a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions in the…

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News 

Aug 312021

New Podcast: Rethinking Public Safety, A Conversation with Executive Director of Fair and Just Prosecution, Miriam Krinsky

In the third episode of the Discussions with DPIC podcast’s Rethinking Public Safety series, Miriam Krinsky (pic­tured) speaks with DPIC Senior Director of Research and Special Projects Ngozi Ndulue about her expe­ri­ences as a for­mer fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tor and the Executive Director of Fair and Just Prosecution (FJP), a net­work of elect­ed pros­e­cu­tors devot­ed to pro­mot­ing fair­ness, equi­ty, com­pas­sion, and fis­cal responsibility in…

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News 

Aug 302021

Jurors who Voted to Convict Toforest Johnson Now Support New Trial

Three mem­bers of the jury who vot­ed to con­vict and sen­tence Toforest Johnson (pic­tured, cen­ter) to death in his cap­i­tal tri­al in Birmingham in 1998 are now urg­ing Alabamas courts to grant him a new tri­al. Having learned of sig­nif­i­cant pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al mis­con­duct dur­ing Johnson’s tri­al for the mur­der of a sheriff’s deputy, includ­ing the rev­e­la­tion that a key wit­ness lied to col­lect reward mon­ey, Jay Crane, Matthew…

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