Entries by Death Penalty Information Center

The number of people on death row or facing possible capital resentencing across the United States now matches a three-decade low, according to data compiled by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) and analyzed by the Death Penalty Information Center. The Spring 2021 edition of LDF’s Death Row USA (DRUSA), the organization’s quarterly death-row census, reports that 2,504 people were imprisoned on state, federal, or military death rows in the United States or still faced jeopardy…

The California Supreme Court has upheld the state’s death-penalty statute against a constitutional challenge that had the potential to overturn the sentences of hundreds of people on California’s death row. In a unanimous ruling issued August 26, 2021 in People v. McDaniel, the court held that a capital jury need not unanimously agree to the existence of an aggravating circumstance before weighing it in the sentencing decision so long as every juror found that the prosecution had proven at…

In an after-hours order issued on September 8, 2021, the U.S. Supreme Court halted Texas’s planned execution of John Henry Ramirez and agreed to review his claim that the state’s refusal to allow his pastor to “lay hands” on him or pray audibly during the execution violated federal law and his First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. The order, released shortly after 9:45 p.m. Eastern time — nearly three hours after Ramirez’s execution was scheduled to begin — directed the…

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 cases. After what they describe as having “spiritually contemplated the issue,” former death-penalty supporters State Representative Lowry Snow (R – St.

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 religion. In a petition for writ of certiorari and application for stay of execution filed in the high court September 7, counsel for Ramirez appealed to the Court to…

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 personally meet with the governor to…

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 executions. On August 26, 2021, O’Connor…

A group of 8^th graders from North Andover Middle School in North Andover, Massachusetts are championing efforts to posthumously pardon a young woman who was sentenced to death for witchcraft in 1693 during the height of the Salem witchcraft hysteria. The students in Carrie LaPierre’s civics class spent a year researching the case of Elizabeth Johnson Jr., who they discovered was the only remaining person wrongfully convicted of witchcraft in the colony who had not been exonerated. They…

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 state. In orders issued on August 31, 2021, the Sacramento Superior Court denied Lacy’s motion to strike down Newsom’s moratorium for allegedly exceeding his authority under the California constitution and granted Newsom’s motion to dismiss…

The number of people on death row or facing possible capital resentencing in the United States has fallen to its lowest level in nearly three decades, according to a DPIC analysis of the latest death-row data compiled by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF). LDF’s Winter 2021 edition of its quarterly Death Row USA (DRUSA) census, released on August 31, 2021, reports that 2,528 people were imprisoned on state, federal, or military death rows in the United States as of January 1…