Entries by Death Penalty Information Center
News
Aug 26, 2021
Federal Appeals Court Upholds Convictions and Death Sentences for Dylann Roof
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit has affirmed Dylann Roof’s federal-court convictions and death sentences for the racially motivated murders of nine parishioners in an historic Charleston, South Carolina African-American church in…
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Aug 25, 2021
NEW SCHOLARSHIP: Death is Indeed Different in U.S. Administrative Law — Condemned Prisoners Receive FEWER Procedural Protections
In the 1970s, the United States Supreme Court famously declared that “death is different” from all other punishments and, as such, required the provision of heightened procedural safeguards to ensure that its application was not cruel or unusual. But in a new article, Death Penalty Exceptionalism and Administrative Law, University of Richmond law professor and capital punishment scholar Corinna B. Lain (pictured) argues that in the context of…
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Aug 24, 2021
Malawi Supreme Court Retreats from Opinion that Declared the Death Penalty Unconstitutional
In a confusing about-face that has angered human rights activists, the Malawian Supreme Court of Appeal has retreated from a prior decision of the court that had appeared to have abolished the African nation’s death penalty. On August 18, 2021, seven justices of the high court issued a “perfected” judgment in the case of Khoviwa v. The Republic declaring that the original opinion, authored by since-retired Justice of Appeal Dunstain Mwaungulu…
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Aug 23, 2021
Nevada Death-Row Prisoner Who Faced July Execution Date Files Application to Commute Death Sentence
A Nevada death-row prisoner has asked for a clemency hearing to present new evidence of significant brain damage and post-traumatic stress disorder caused by military service and childhood…
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Aug 20, 2021
Commentary: How Federal Habeas Corpus Law Enables States to Commit Miscarriages of Justice
1990s amendments to federal law that severely restricted federal judicial review of state convictions are enabling states to commit miscarriages of justice that risk the lives and freedom of innocent people across the country, writes Washington Post columnist Radley Balko…
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Aug 19, 2021
China Upholds Retaliatory Death Sentence Imposed on Canadian Citizen, Escalating Diplomatic Dispute
As China awaited a decision on whether Canada would extradite a top Chinese businesswoman to the U.S. on criminal charges, a Chinese court upheld a controversial death sentence imposed on a Canadian man, further escalating tensions between the two…
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Aug 18, 2021
Federal Appeals Court Upholds Ruling Barring Death Penalty for Intellectually Disabled Arkansas Death-Row Prisoner Alvin Jackson
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit has upheld a federal district court ruling that Arkansas death-row prisoner Alvin Jackson is ineligible for the death penalty because of intellectual…
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Aug 17, 2021
Anti-Violence Advocates, Prosecutors, and Innocence Groups File Supreme Court Briefs in Support of Battered Woman on Texas Death Row
A coalition of advocates for victims of domestic and gender-based violence, former prosecutors, legal scholars, and innocence organizations have filed briefs in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of a Texas woman who was sentenced to death for what forensic evidence suggests may have been an accidental fall that killed her two-year-old…
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Aug 16, 2021
NBC’s ‘Dateline’ Investigates the Wrongful Capital Conviction of Death-Row Exoneree Walter Ogrod
NBC’s true crime series, Dateline, featured an episode on August 13, 2021 on the wrongful conviction and eventual exoneration of former Philadelphia death-row prisoner Walter Ogrod (pictured). The episode, entitled “The Investigation,” is part of an NBC News series called “Justice for All” that reports on wrongful convictions and the U.S. criminal legal…
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Aug 13, 2021
Oklahoma Federal Court Rules that Death-Row Prisoners’ Challenge to State’s Lethal Injection Protocol May Proceed to Trial
An Oklahoma federal judge has ordered a trial in a suit filed by the state’s death-row prisoners challenging the constitutionality of Oklahoma’s three-drug lethal-injection process. Judge Stephen Friot of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma ruled on August 11, 2021 that the suit, which alleges that Oklahoma’s execution protocol violates the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment, may proceed to trial. Judge Friot denied several other…
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